Paul's Back Garden Safari

On Friday night as I was clearing the kitchen getting ready to sit down and watch a film with the family I came across this fantastic ichneumon wasp. It seemed to be drinking water from the kitchen top and wasn't in any hurry to move off, nor was it disturbed at all by the camera and me fussing about around it. After some detective work on the net, with my books and help from the fantastic experts on iSpot I'm able to confirm it as Ichneumon stramentor. It's about 1.5cm long if I don't include the antennae, and 2cm including the length of the antennae. It has a l ong tapered abdomen, the first half of which is yellow and the rear half black, with yellow spot at the tip (both on the top and beneath. Legs have black femora; tibiae are half yellow blending into brown that exceeds to the tarsi. Black thorax (with yellow spot) and black head. This specimen is a  female as the males have all black antennae. It's flight time is from April through to July....

Last weekend I finally got my moth trap out of the garage. This was only it's second outing since I bought it at the end of last year. The first use was almost immediately after unpacking it and assembling it in November. It will come as no surprise to those in the know, that this wasn't a successful trapping initiative. Well the weather was promising a mild and dry night, so I trundled out there with the trap, plugged it in and retreated back to the house - more in hope than expectation. Saturday morning revealed a damp morning, following some light rain earlier. This didn't inspire any confidence, but after an early breakfast I disappeared into the garage armed with the camera and a new copy of my Field Guide to Moths of UK and Ireland. Turning over the first two egg trays revealed only a tiny mired bug, Scolopostethus decorates. It is only about 4mm long and I almost missed it in my expectation of finding hundreds of huge moths. It's normally associated with he...

Over the winter I noticed that a song thrush was visiting the garden on a regular basis. We had always had one visit occasionally, but each week recently I recorded it's presence as part of the BTO Garden Bird census. Then I started seeing two in the back garden at the same time. This also coincided by a song thrush singing it repetitive song early in the morning somewhere in or near the back garden. Euonymous varigata. The nest is towards the top. Last week I disturbed a bird from a thick Euonymous bush growing near the fence. It flew away too fast too see what it was. Over the next week or so I kept my eye open and saw a thrush feeding in the garden regularly, and occasionally making a visit the bush. A close up view of the nest through the leaves Last week I had was able to confirm that it was nesting towards the top of the bush. However, over the past 4 days I've not seen it making any visits to the nest. A view of t...