52 Weeks Wild #21

A collection of my wild moments from the past week...   I didn't get beyond the garden for my wild time this week, but I did better than last week as I did manage some garden time on most days and noticed lots!

White herb robert and a little spider in my garden on Monday evening...

This is how the garden pond is looking at the moment. I love it at this time of year when things grow and it looks a little more wild.

For comparison, this is how it looked in March...

There are a lot bees in the garden at the moment, several different species. I've watched them on the cornflowers the bug hotel is really busy at the moment too!

This week I also spotted a nest of sparrow chicks (I heard them and peered through a small gap in the hedge) and have seen the first of this year's garden 'sparrowlings', hopping around and being fed by papa sparrow.

It's a terrible photo, just a peep through the hedge into this hidden little world.

Fields around here are full of buttercups which look lovely, especially in the sunshine we had last week! I love the lanes I travel to work at this time of year too, lined with cow parsley and various other flowers.

The fields beyond the garden are full of flowers too and one evening I spotted a red legged partridge sitting on the wall in the evening sunshine.

On one of those hot days we had this week, I waited for the sun to start setting then took my book and a large glass of wine out and sat in the garden for a while, reading to the sound of those sparrow chicks in the hedge and other birds singing.

In the last few days I spotted a wasp beetle in the garden (on a quite dirty conservatory window) and also a mayfly which I expect was newly emerged from the pond.

Corn chamomile has flowered around the pond this weekend...

Yesterday I spent the afternoon doing some gardening and spotted this moth on an elder... I haven't looked it up yet.

It's half term now so I have a week off school and will hopefully be spending some time outdoors though I have lots to do and a few things planned during the week. I'm also looking after a tank full of tadpoles this week, I brought them home from school on Friday... they've been in the early years class since late April and are only still alive thanks to my intervention as no one else at school has any idea what they need or how to look after them. I didn't want to leave them alone in school for ten days, I'm sure they'd have died, so I volunteered to bring them home for the week.

There are 27 tadpoles in there. They've been very slow to develop at school but I'm hoping more regular fresh water from the garden pond and water butts, plus a better diet whilst they're with me will spur them on a bit so the children will finally see some changes next week.