Photo Blog

I love observing nature through the changing seasons both in my Norfolk wildlife garden and the surrounding countryside. I blog about wildlife gardening as well as about Norfolk butterflies, wildflowers and other flora and fauna that I come across. Bookmark my Norfolk nature photo blog to keep up to date with my photographic adventures.

Late Spring by the Pond

After a long chilly spring, the first and second week of May saw high pressure finally arrive in East Anglia and our meadow and pond burst into a hive of belated activity as temperatures soared into the 20s.

I saw my first Large Red Damselfly, my first Yellow Flag Iris and my first Broad-bodied chaser dragonfly, whilst the Ragged Robin started to reach full bloom. Our butterflies also got busier with Holly Blues out and about early, dancing along the native hedgerow. It seems to be a good year for them. With my Garlic Mustard and Dames-violet also in flower, Orange-tips and Green-veined white butterflies have now made an appearance too, though sadly in ones and twos.

Yellow Flag Iris flower spike

Pink Ragged Robin flowers

Large Red Damselfly

Poppies, Poppies, Poppies

At last! Some beautiful, warm, sunny summery days.

Lately I've become totally obsessed by the fleeting, ephemeral nature of some beautiful red Common Poppies, Papaver rhoeas, that have sprung up by the new patio due to earth disturbance.

The Poppy’s flower buds burst open first thing but are so fleeting they only last a single morning. Their nectar banquet must be intense as pollinators such as bumblebees and hoverflies go wild over them.

Through the course of the morning the delicate Common Poppy petals steadily fold further and further back until they fall to the ground, or are knocked off by the weight of frantic bees trying to land. This all happens in the space of a few hours and by early afternoon the blooms are already gone, petals lying crumpled and shriveled up on the ground.

Last Butterflies of the season

What was probably my last butterfly shoot of 2022 happened one evening in beautiful golden light when I spotted not one but four female Common Blue butterflies settling down to roost in a very small strip of our wildflower meadow that we’d decided for the first time was mature enough to leave uncut over winter.

It was a timely reminder to me that the less we humans do to intervene, “control” and “manage” things and the more we resist the urge to “tidy up”, the better chance wildlife has to thrive in our man-made garden, park and urban environments.

Butterflies in particular are vulnerable to disturbance at pretty much any time of year as their eggs, caterpillars or pupae lifestages may all be needing to shelter amongst or feed on plants even when adults are not on the wing. If at all possible, its a good idea to try to leave a section of meadow untouched for a full twelve month cycle at any one time to allow larval stages to overwinter successfully undisturbed.

Nature just isn’t a tidy phenomenon, its chaotic and unpredictable. But the innate human desire for what is ultimately a false sense of control is a perennial urge played out in our gardens and very hard to resist, especially when accompanied by societal pressures of convention and fashion. Over the years this along with the globalisation of plant production resulted in the creatiion of a modern aesthetic that is surprisingly wildlife unfriendly from an ecological perspective, with large showy double blooms with little nectar to offer pollinators, exotic non-native flowers that can’t be used as host plants and monoculture green-baize lawns doused in weedkiller to prevent even a daisy or dandelion, and these days, a great deal of hard landscaping too.

Thankfully the emergence of the wildlife-friendly gardening trend and greater awareness of envirnomental issues is gradually encouraging the development (and revival) of more naturalistic planting schemes and is evolving that traditional aesthetic towards more sympathetic wildlife-friendly designs such as prairie style and cottage-garden planting, low mow flowering lawns and the inclusion of mini wildflower meadows and even wildlife ponds.

After all, who wants a dull old bowling green lawn when the reward is enjoying beautiful wildlife sights like these little roosting butterflies instead!

Long-winged Cone-head

Long-winged Cone-heads use a liquid bubble to regulate their body temperature on hot days

Thanks to Pinocchio I’m embarrassed to admit I had always naively assumed there were as a rule green grasshoppers and beige crickets. Of course in the insect world its never that simple as this striking creature that took up residence on one of my bulrushes reminded me.

The first day I spotted her I assumed she had had a lucky escape from the pond and wound up on the Bullrush accidentally after leaping away from a predator. But I became curious when I saw her the second day running so started rummaging around in field guids to find out what she was and what she was carrying.

It transpired that she was a female Long-winged Cone-head, or Conocephalus discolor ( also Conocephalus fuscus). Cone-head sounds a bit like an insult but it refers to the angled shape of the species’ head. There are several species of Cone-heads in the Bush-cricket family, all of which are omnivorous, have long antennae and the females carry long blade-like ovipositors. Long-winged Cone-heads are distributed in Southern England and East Anglia living in dry and damp grasslands.

I wondered at first whether the droplet was perhaps an egg bubble but apparently Cone-heads blow out globules of liquid which is used as a means to keep cool and control body temperature on hot days. The females only have one brood a year and chew a hole in hollow stems of reeds or rush, then insert their eggs using their long ovipositor.

According to Wikipedia, high population densities can also encourage the development of an extra-long winged morph which has aided the species’ ability to expand into new favourable habitat as the climate has warmed.


Golden Blues

I always start to feel a little sad at this time of year as our now golden wlidflower meadow will soon be down for another year. But in the meantime I’ve been lucky to enjoy the golden evening sunlight falling on the last brood of Common Blue butterflies who like to bask on the west side of the meadow to catch the last rays of the sun before going to roost.

Despite all the odds, this late summer Common Blue butterfly generation seem to have had a reasonable year, which could bode well for next season. They are one of the Blue butterfly species that use ants to shelter and protect their late stage caterpillars and chyrsalis so perhaps that may be one reason why. Ants are just flourishing in our meadow and around its edge and quite sizeable ant mounds are now developing. It just serves as another reminder of how intericately joined up and interdependent all life actually is.

Sparkling Wings, Spangly Light

The return of fine weather after a week of rain and low temperatures seemed to mark the season’s transition from late Spring into mid Summer. It also brought a flurry of emergences in and arrivals to my wildlife garden.

The Sparrows and Blackbirds have both fledged and are cheeping and chirring charmingly at their parents next to the feeders. As the nectar- and colour-rich magenta Knapweed starts to emerge en masse so do the meadow butterflies. The Meadow Brown and Large Skipper butterflies have emerged, the latter slightly battered so perhaps he had the misfortune to emerge right before the bad weather. In the old Rose garden Goldfinches are frequently landing on the Knapweed buds and a fresh Small Tortoiseshell has been enjoying the Oxeye daisies. A female Common Blue has finally materialised so hopefully my lonesome early male will find his partner.

The other arrival surprised me a little, I’ve been worrying about my pond both for its survival through the drought but also more broadly, due to the process of succession, the gradual growing in causes acidification from leaf matter and less free space. This affects which species can live in a freshwater pond and last year I saw reduced biodiversity the first time.

But my spirits lifted along with the water level thanks to the arrival of a beautiful Four-spotted Chaser dragonfly. He took up the territory for a day or two, on the second I watched as he mated twice with a passing female then hovered over her on protective sentry duty while she oviposited on leaves. Shortly after he moved on to try his luck elsewhere.

Cheery Cowslips

Cowslips are invaluable to early pollinators and have a long flowering period

The mid-Spring superstar of our wildflower meadow this year was undoubtably the humble Cowslip, Primula veris. I’d always hoped to see them in my wildlife garden, as not far up the lane from my cottage is a little tucked away-clearing near a small copse that is too small to farm and in springtime always seemed to be bursting full of rich custard-coloured Cowslips mixing in beautifully with the deep indigo of native Bluebells.

Disappointingly, despite their inclusion in my native seedmix for clay soil, for the first two years not a single one materialised. I philosophically put it down to the soil conditions or an unlucky batch mix and thought I might sow some plugs another year.

Then unexpectedly, the very next spring just a smattering appeared! I was overjoyed to learn that it was simply that their seeds can take several seasons to germinate and interpreted it as an encouraging sign our meadow ecosystem was establishing itself well naturally.

Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength, spreading almost right across the small sward. They must particularly like cool dry springs as this year, our meadow’s sixth season, has been their best appearance to date.

Wildlife Value of Cowslips

Aside from their cheerful colour and long lasting flowerheads, they have a healthy wildlife value. Their flowers are a vital resource for pollinators, particularly for early solitary bee species, quite a few of which frequent our garden, but also for butterflies such as the Brimstone butterfly and other insects such as beetles. They are also the caterpillar plant for the Duke of Burgundy butterfly, which is unfortunately not resident in Norfolk.

A member of the Primula family, the Cowslip shares more than a passing resemblance to it's cousins the Primrose Primula vulgaris and the Oxlip Primula elatior, however both of these lack its pleasant apricot perfume and have more open paler lemon-hued flowers.

Plant Folklore of Cowslips

Cowslips can take several years to establish in a new meadow

Amusingly the Cowslip’s latin name Primula veris romantically deems it the “true” primrose, while its established English name more, ahem, rustically refers to its habit of growing near “cow’s slops” or cowpats in grazing pasture. It does have over two dozen pleasanter names in traditional folklore including other farming references such as Milk Maidens, descriptive names such as Freckled face, Golden Drops and Long legs as well as biblical names mentioning Mary or alluding to a myth that Cowslips sprang up where St Peter dropped the keys to heaven, perhaps in a cow pat!

Cowslips’ varied folklore names include: Artetyke, Arthritica, Buckles, Bunch of keys, Crewel, Drelip, Fairy Cups, Fairies' flower, Freckled face, Golden drops, Herb Peter, Hey-flower, Paigle, Peggle, Key Flower, Key of Heaven, Lady's fingers, Long legs, Milk maidens, Mayflower, Mary's tears, Our Lady's Keys, Palsywort, Password, Petty Mulleins, Plumrocks, Tisty-tosty. Welsh: dagrau Mair meaning Mary's tears, Anglo-Saxon: Cuy lippe, Greek: Paralysio.

The Cowslip has a rich cultural and culinary history too; traditionally it decorated Mayday garlands and was strewn along churchyard pathways at weddings and religious festivals. The Cowslip was used medicinally to aid sleep and heal coughs as well as to make Cowslip wine and “Tisty-tosty”, little balls of crushed up Cowslip flowers.

In the literary world the Cowslip’s honours include mentions in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and “Henry V” plays as well as featuring in Keats’ poem of Springtime romance “Hither, hither love”.

Hither, hither, love —

‘Tis a shady mead —

Hither, hither, love!

Let us feed and feed!

Hither, hither, sweet —

’Tis a cowslip bed —

Hither, hither, sweet!

'Tis with dew bespread!

Hither, hither, dear —

By the breath of life —

Hither, hither, dear!

Be the summer’s wife!

Though one moment’s pleasure

In one moment flies —

Though the passion’s treasure

In one moment dies —

Yet it has not passed —

Think how near, how near! —

And while it doth last,

Think how dear, how dear!

Hither, hither, hither

Love its boon has sent —

If I die and wither

I shall die content!

John Keats









 

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