Marigolds in the flower and fruit bed, with the Wilder sign just visible and the bramble patch behind
Today, 14 July 2024, the marigolds are looking stunning. It’s only three months since we took on this allotment share, helping out friends who found the whole plot a bit too big to maintain. There are rules about how much space can be left untended, or given over to flowers. We knew we’d want to make it as attractive to wildlife as possible, so we came up with a rough plan.
Tricia revealing the first bed in mid April.Forking out the bindweed – there’s a lot!
This is our half, extending from the shed to the bramble patch (behind the camera). In the foreground is the flower and fruit bed, a week or two after sowing. At the end of April, we planted an apple and a cherry tree, and three fruit bushes: gooseberry, blackcurrant and tayberry. We added strawberry plants, scattered wildflower seeds and put in some plants from our garden – lungwort and lavender.
Soon after that, we added some veg to the other two beds – potatoes, onions, runner beans, courgettes, and sweetcorn. We haven’t netted anything as we’re happy to share with the wildlife. Our crop so far has been three strawberries and two courgettes. We have a few apples coming, and the birds had the cherries.
Slow wormA loveliness of ladybirdsJackdaw
The place was already great for wildlife. There were jackdaws, slow worms, and, thanks to the pond, frogs and newts. The bramble patch is brilliant for bees, hoverflies, and ladybirds – so far we’ve seen 2-spots, 7-spots, 11-spots and harlequins. Now we’re into July, we’re getting more butterflies. To help wildlife more, we’ve been adding more habitat, like this pebble pile under the myrtle bush.
Myrtle, with stone pile as a habitat for invertebrates
We have a log pile under the bramble, a bee hotel, and a shallow dish with stones in, so that butterflies and bees can keep their ‘feet’ dry when having a drink! Last time I looked under it, I found a pill woodlouse, one of my favourite creatures. We’ve spotted several beetles around the plot, including the Strawberry Seed beetle, a False Blister beetle, and a Ground beetle. So far I’ve also seen two types of grasshoppers in the flower beds.
The seed mix has done quite well, with a range of flowers coming up including Scarlet Pimpernel, Vetch, Snapdragons, Cornflowers and, just coming out now, Lupins – a plant that takes me back to my childhood.
Left, from top: Cornflower, Vetch, Scarlet Pimpernel. Main: Lupin
The plot lacks shade, apart from close to the bramble, so we’ve recently added an arch, and put in some climbers at the bottom: a vine and a honeysuckle. A bit late for this summer, but in future it will look amazing and provide more food for wildlife. We might even get some grapes!
An arch for climbers, to provide some shade
We’re really happy with how it’s going so far. The location is quite peaceful, so it’s a lovely place to spend an hour or two. We’re making it more comfortable for humans, but more on that next time.
We put in a Wilder Southampton sign to tell the neighbours these are not ‘weeds’!
Bitterne shopping precinct is, to be blunt, pretty lifeless. There are a few trees and shrubs at either end, but under the shrubs (seen in the background in the first photo), the ground is pretty compacted, and nothing grows. In March, I was getting increasingly concerned about the lack of flowers for pollinators, so I decided to take action. The horse trough seemed the only feasible place to do something that wouldn’t take much looking after, particularly as I’d recently started going to Bitterne every week to go swimming. Why am I telling you this? Because it’s something I’ve learned over the years doing my Pollinating Peartree project, which involves maintaining a few patches in the Peartree ward. I do this as a volunteer, largely on my own, and since I’ve been working on the Wilder Southampton project I’ve used the experience to offer advice to others who are thinking of doing something similar. One crucial thing, I think, is how convenient it is to check on your patch, especially in summer when watering is needed.
I checked with my councillor if it would be ok to plant the trough, and he thought it was a great idea, particularly as a local man had recently cleaned the outside and refreshed the lettering. On Saturday 6 April I cleared some of the ‘weeds’, including the sycamore saplings, but kept the Herb Robert, and added some pollinator plants from my garden (so it hadn’t cost me anything if they failed or were pulled out). I chose a Saturday so I’d be able to go back on the Sunday to check on it. Before and after pictures are below.
You can see from the pictures that the trough dates back to 1905, so it’s part of the history of the area. This is why the local man, Paul, decided to clean it up. I didn’t know him when I planted it, but when I was adding some plant labels two weeks later, on 18 April, he approached me and introduced himself. We got chatting and I took a photo of him to post on social media, with his permission.
I put the photo on the SO19 Community Group on Facebook. I’ve posted on there before about my own planting or the Victoria Road beds that were started as my first Wilder Southampton project and are now maintained by the Victoria Road Gardeners. I usually get up to a hundred ‘likes’ and some positive comments, but this post was different. At the last count, it had attracted 1,400 likes, 103 comments and 21 shares. I was stunned. I think it must be down to the combination of two strangers independently acting to improve something historic. From the comments, it became clear that Paul is well-known and well-liked, so I’m sure that helped. In my case, the improvement wasn’t for humans, though I didn’t make that clear in my post. Maybe if I had done, the reaction would have been different. I think later in the year, when there are more flowers, I might post again and spell out why I put the plants in. It’ll be interesting to see how people respond to that!
Another group I posted in was Southampton Heritage photos. This was to find out more about the history of the trough. I love this group as there is always someone who knows the answer, plus it often starts conversations about memories. It wasn’t long before someone mentioned other troughs around the city, followed by another person recommending a book by AGK Leonard with the wonderful title “Southampton Memorials of Care for Man and Beast“. Fortunately for me this was available from the Bitterne Local History Society shop just along the road from the trough, at the bargain price of £1! It’s been fascinating to read more about its origins. Bitterne Precinct its third location – it was first positioned at the top of Lance’s Hill for the benefit of horses that had made the slow and difficult climb. What I really love though are the personal stories, such as one comment on my Facebook post that said “When my dad was a kid, he dived into it to escape hornets.” I wonder what his dad would think of it being enhanced for bees!
2 May, a month after planting. Herb Robert, Lungwort and Forget-me-Nots in flower, sedum doing well, and marigold seeds germinating.
Photo taken at Bevois Town Primary School, home of hedgehogs and hedgehog champions!
A few days ago, on a dark February morning around 6 a.m., I opened my front door to see a hedgehog snuffling around the mat in the porch. He or she dashed into the shrubs at the side, but those few seconds were enough to make my day. In fact, it’s made my month! That was the first time I’d seen a hog in my garden since October last year. Four months without them, and the garden had felt kind of empty. After several years of them visiting, I’d almost started to take them for granted. If I think back to when they started coming, I was so excited – a proper wild animal in the garden. What a privilege! I got a hedgehog hole put in the fence, bought hog biscuits, and made a shelter in a quiet spot. I even bought a wildlife camera. Then one day, they stopped coming. So what happened?
The fox happened. Previously, I’d only seen them in the front garden, but in mid October a neighbour sent me a photo of one on the shed roof at about 9 pm. I put my camera out and discovered they were eating the hedgehog biscuits. The first time, a hog came later, but after that, no more hogs, but the fox kept coming. I didn’t really want foxes in the back garden, so it seemed the only thing to do was to stop providng food. I felt bad about this because the local hedgehogs had already suffered disruption and lost habitat.
For years, there had been a very wild garden across the back alley. I’d been told hogs lived there, then the humans moved, and for about two years it was left to nature (apart from the car parked in it, but that’s another story!). In August 2023, the owner had the garden completely cleared. Not long after that, our wildlife-friendly nextdoor neighbours moved out, and their garden was similarly tidied.
For two months, this clump of grass in a local flower bed was the closest I got to seeing a hedgehog! Then in early January, I spotted a small hog running along the pavement. Wisely, it went into a garden three doors up, where another wildlife-friendly family lives. That decided it. I resolved to make a fox-proof feeding station.
I found a video from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and collected a plastic box I’d seen dumped in an alley, plus some bricks flytipped in a verge.
One brick is placed in front of the doorway, leaving a corridor for a hog but not enough space for a fox or a cat. Another brick on top means it’s not easy to knock the box out of the way. The first few nights I put food in, nothing happened. Then one morning the biscuits were gone, but who’d eaten them was a mystery (my money was on a rat). Next night, the camera was set up, revealing a cat having a sniff around but not getting in.
Then, two days after my morning visitor – success! Three separate hog visits in the early hours, and two of those were definitely different hogs. How do I know? Because one had a distinctive scar on its back.
Honestly, I’m overjoyed to have the spiky ones back. I just wish everyone could experience this – too many children I’ve asked have never seen a hedgehog. I’m pretty sure they’d be as enchanted as I am.
Read more about Hedgehog Champions Bevois Town Primary School and visit the Southampton National Park City website, where you’ll find advice on how you can help hedgehogs to thrive.
Christmas Day 2023: Day One of 12 Days Wild, the Wildlife Trusts winter challenge to do something wild each day. I started by sitting in the garden in the dark at 7 am with a hot chocolate, taking advantage of the quiet to listen to the birds waking up. On a normal Monday there would be much more traffic noise – and for that matter, on a normal Monday, I wouldn’t be drinking hot chocolate at that time! As I listened, I looked at our silver birch, thinking about how significant it is to me. The tree has many stories to tell and in this post, I’ll share some of them.  (And if you wonder about that mysterious light shining through the sunflower seed feeder – that’s the streetlight in the alley beyond the fence!)
The tree is a place of shelter for some, like this very young blackbird one spring. It seemed to me that it had not long fledged, probably from the nest in the ivy on my neighbour’s shed roof. Most years, we get a young bird or two coming into the garden, and they don’t always make it straight to the safety of the tree. I remember the year we found one perched on the kitchen window sill – we stayed in the house so as not to scare it, holding our breath until one of its parents spotted it and called it to safety. Another time, I opened the garden room door one morning to discover a bird inside. He or she had got shut in accidentally, and spent the night there. Poor thing! Nestled among the leaves of the silver birch seems a better place to be.
As well as blackbirds, the tree – or rather the sunflower seeds I put out in the feeder! – attracts blue tits and goldfinches, and, less often, great tits and greenfinches. I’ve learned over the years to recognise the different species from their calls, as I don’t often see them clearly, especially when the tree is in full leaf. Sometimes I identify them by their habits – the blue tits take one seed and go to a branch to eat it, while the goldfinches eat at the feeder. Both of them ‘peel’ the seeds, even though I’m providing them with sunflower hearts, which have no shells!
Two of the smaller tree inhabitants: a forest shield bug and a tube web spider
The birch attracts other, smaller, wildlife too, like the bug and spider above. The first year I lived here, there was a host of sawfly caterpillars that were eating their way through the leaves. They stripped quite a few branches.  But since I started attracting birds to the garden, I don’t see many at all, and the tree keeps her leaves. I assume the blue tits pick off the caterpillars before they do too much damage.
Other, unseen creatures make the tree their home too, leaving beautiful patterns in the algae on the bark. Slugs or snails perhaps, eating their way up and down in the dead of night.
The bark is papery, naturally peeling away, so sometimes I’ve collected it for lighting fires at forest school. Birch wood seasons quickly and burns well, so when we prune the tree each winter, I save twigs to use as kindling the following year.
Blackbird supervising the annual prune 😄
There are many ways to give the birch twigs a second life, so much better than just putting them in the garden waste. I pile them up under shrubs to make habitat for insects, which in turn gives birds and hedgehogs a source of food. Then there are crafts: the sticks make wands, the cross on which to wrap a Godseye, flower stalks, and rungs of ladders for forest folk. They can also be turned into tiny broomsticks, reflecting a traditional use for birch.
A mini broomstick GodseyeForest folk with their rope ladders
Our garden is a real sun trap, so in high summer the shade provided by the tree is very welcome. She also gives us one anchor point for our “shade sheet”, which helps reduce the amount of watering needed for our plants. And for us, the strong trunk holds one end of our hammock 😆
As I write this, we’ve recently finished the annual prune, and it’s been quite drastic this year. It had to be, because our garden is small, and the tree is getting big! She’s about 12 years old now. We’re confident she’ll look gorgeously leafy in spring, and can’t wait for those leaves to appear. My book of tree wisdom tells me that silver birch is “womanly, constant and friendly, a tree of enchantment”, and I’d say our birch is all of those. My home office overlooks the garden, so I often find my eyes and ears drawn to the tree. Long may she be a part of my life.
When I wrote the previous post in early September, I’d intended this part 2 to follow quite soon. It’s taken two months for the handwritten notes to become a blog, but in some ways not much has changed. The photos here were taken in September, but as autumn has so far been quite mild, the Subway Strip doesn’t look too different. There are now a lot of leaves, fallen from the sycamore, and fewer flowers, but otherwise it’s more or less the same.
The first photo shows Lungwort, which has thrived in this plot. It provides great ground cover, helping the soil to stay moist and cool in hot, dry periods, as well as giving insects somewhere to shelter. In spring it flowers early, and is popular with bees.
Another plant that spreads well and is popular with bees, but in late summer, is Ice Plant (Sedum). The label is there not only to inform passersby what it is, but also to show the area is looked after.
I’ve thought about adding more detailed labels, but am not sure how long they’d remain in place. For now, I hope the Pollinating Peartree sign is enough. It directs people to Facebook, where they can find a link to this blog.
The photo above shows about half of the Subway Strip, with the subway under the railway bridge just visible top left. In September, there were still a lot of Knapweed seedheads, left for the birds. I thinned them out to keep that balance between ‘tidy’ and wild. They’ve since been cut back, with some stems left upright and others laid under leaves, providing hibernation and shelter areas for small creatues such as beetles, spiders and woodlice.
The end closest to the subway is quite shady, with ivy and nettles. Both are wonderful for wildlife, with ivy providing shelter and late summer nectar, and nettles being a food source for red admiral butterfly caterpillars. But nettles also sting, and are seen as weeds, which probably increases the chances of rubbish being thrown in this corner. They can also take over, swamping other plants, so for all these reasons I cut them back without removing them completely.
To finish, here are some of the flowers that were in bloom or bud in September. From top left, the yellow one is Birdsfoot Trefoil, Borage (still blooming in November), Self-Heal, Yarrow, and, in the centre, a Dandelion bud. Of course!
I was surprised to realise I haven’t written a blog specifically about the Pollinating Peartree project since my first post in January 2021. For a while I’ve been thinking that I’d like to do two things. One is to reflect on what I’ve learned, as I think it could be helpful to others who might want to adopt planters or verges. Since I started working on the Wilder Southampton project in September 2022, I’ve often drawn on this experience. My other aim is to provide more detail about the Bridge Road areas for passersby, to explain what’s happening.
There are two areas to Bridge Road, and both have Pollinating Peartree signs which give the Facebook page address. But not everyone uses Facebook so this blog is another way to communicate. This photo was taken in early Sept 2023, towards the end of a week-long, very hot spell. This partly explains why there are no flowers in bloom. Left of the sign is some Self-Heal that’s gone to seed, next to that are some Dandelion leaves, and to the right are some Lungwort leaves. There are also twigs and dead leaves, from the tree.
The tree is a maple and I’d estimate it to be about 30 feet (10 m) tall. The dark band at the top of the photo is the underside of the Itchen Bridge. Behind the tree, to the right, is the railway bridge over Bridge Road. I named this area the Tree Triangle as it’s almost triangular and I like alliteration! This photo was also taken on 9 Sept 2023. The planter doesn’t look lush, and in truth, it rarely does. The tree takes a lot of moisture from the ground, which never gets a good soaking when it rains anyway as it’s quite sheltered. It isn’t practical to water the bed beyond giving individual plants a good soaking when they’re newly planted. So, two lessons from this patch: beware of taking on a bed with a mature tree in it! There are also lots of roots that make digging difficult. And secondly, consider the distance from your water source to the bed. This is about a 5 minute cycle, and I usually take two or three 2-litre bottles of rain water with me if I want to do targeted watering.
Despite the weather, there are currently a few plants in flower, including drought-tolerant Sedum (ice plant) and Horseshoe Vetch, which must have come from a seed mix we scattered. We planted the sedum close to the wall, away from the driest areas. Usually when we plant, we add some extra compost or leaf-mould around the plant as well as watering it well. Why don’t we just put some top soil, you might wonder. Well, apart from cost and practicality, the main reason is that we don’t want the soil to be too good. Wildflowers thrive in poor quality soil, and back in May 2023, they were doing really well, as can be seen from these two photos.
The bed actually looked quite green, and the close up shows some of the flowers, including blue cornflowers, orange marigolds and yellow something-in-the-dandelion family! During this fleeting period, passersby might admire it, but when it’s less attractive to humans, it’s still great for wildlife.
This picture, taken in July, shows those same yellow flowers now gone to seed. We left them so that birds could eat them. In the background you might just be able to see some purple flowers – those are Knapweed, also great for birds when they’ve gone to seed. You’ll meet a lot more of them in the next blog post, which is about the Subway Strip. This is the other Bridge Rd area. Walk through the subway under the railway line that you can see in a photo above, and you’ll find a very different patch, with its own challenges and joys.
Meet the Toadflax Brocade moth caterpillar, which came into my life on Wednesday, 23 August 2023. They feed on Purple Toadflax, a plant that I first identified on Peartree Green a few years ago, and which is abundant in the alleys close to our garden. This post is about noticing wildlife in unexpected places and about the value of leaving wild edges – even if the flowers are garden escapes. Purple Toadflax was introduced to gardens from Italy and first noted in the wild around the 1830s. It thrives on walls, pavement cracks and rough ground, and is often found near houses. It’s also attractive. Look at the individual flowers in the photo below.
Bees love the flowers, so I’m happy that it self-seeds easily. I also collect seeds to scatter on my Pollinating Peartree wildflower patches. But while I’m familiar with the plant, I’d never seen the caterpillars before. Then I bent down to pick up some sultanas that had overshot the shed roof (bird food!) and noticed one, two, three … actually six caterpillars on one plant.
I thought the caterpillars were the larvae of Mullein moths, but it wasn’t an exact match, so I searched for ones that eat Purple Toadflax, and soon found the attractive Toadflax Brocade moth. According to Moths UK, it arrived in England in the 1950s, and is found around south-east and central southern coasts. I’m not far from the coast, but haven’t seen the moth so far, so here are two photos from the Moths UK website.
The plant was quite isolated, as the stretch of alley behind our shed is unusually clear. In the photo, you can see that, further along, there’s tall grass next to our neighbour’s fence, and opposite there are also plenty of places for little creatures to live. So it was quite a surprise to find a colony of caterpillars, but also a bit worrying – where would they go to eat once that plant was stripped? And where would they go to overwinter as chrysalises?
I surveyed the other plants nearby, including on the Alley Flowerbed, and found 8 more caterpillars on two other Toadflaxes. Next morning, I checked them again. I was alarmed to see that three of the six I’d first noticed were ‘queued up’ at the top of a stem, nose to tail, with nowhere to go!
That photo, taken from above, shows how little of the plant is left. It was tempting to stay and watch, to see what would happen next, but, fascinated as I was – I had other things to do. I pulled up a few unoccupied stems that had finished flowering and put them next to the isolated plant. When I had another look, around 10 hours later, I could only see these two on the fresh foliage, and one heading under the fence.
Where were the others? Eaten by birds? Under my shed? Or had they travelled across the alley to the other plants? There were now about 20 caterpillars of various sizes on several plants, but none on the flowerbed itself, nor on the spikes along the east-facing fence.
This photo shows a section of the Alley Flowerbed, with Sedum, Great Mullein, Verbena, Welsh Poppies and Marigolds, as well as the Purple Toadflax just right of centre. I have no idea if Toadflax Brocade larvae eat other plants, but I’m keeping a close eye out for them on there!
The fence behind the bed is north facing, with no Toadflaxes. The west-facing fence has several plants, and with some already occupied, I’m expecting to see more caterpillars appearing. I wonder how far north they’ll go though? Perhaps the moths prefer to lay their eggs on spikes oriented to the south or west?
Maybe the reason I’d not seen these caterpillars before is because the eggs hatch and the larvae grow over just a few days, and I hadn’t stopped and looked at the right time before. Now though, I know what’s caused the bare stems I’ve seen.
Day Three, 25 August, and the fun of seeing what would happen next – and wondering what else I might see – prompted me to spend several hours working around the alleys, litter picking and clearing some of the messier and dead vegetation. This was strategic – there is always a risk that someone will come along and scrape away the ‘weeds’, or – worse – spray them. The latter is a risk outside one particular house. So, I wanted to make the area reasonably looked after, and perhaps subconsciously, I wanted to be there in case anyone came along. That last point had only just occurred to me as I write, but the fact that the owner of the garden behind the east facing fence has ripped out a huge bank of ivy on the alley side this week probably put me on alert. You can see where the ivy was in the second photo below.
Later, I spotted two caterpillars climbing the fence. I watched as one moved sideways, onto another slat. It reached over with its head end, gripped with two pairs of feet, and swung the rest of its body over. Quite an impressive grip.
Day Four. No caterpillars on the fence, but still some on the plant. For a while, I watched one nibbling a leaf. You can see the head at the bottom of the picture.
Then I noticed one on an east-facing plant. As I looked for a good angle to take a photo, I realised there were actually four of them. The colours and pattern that look so striking against a fence actually act as great camouflage against the food plant.
This camouflage is probably even more effective on the Common Toadflax, which is yellow. But now I have my eye in, so I easily spotted a couple on some plants on Victoria Road.
I’m aware that I may be a little unusual in paying so much attention to this caterpillar, but it goes to show what might be living right under your nose. The beauty of it is that no special equipment is needed, and it’s all happening ten paces from my door. Naturally, I’ll be continuing to observe these creatures, hoping to see a chrysalis and a moth one day. And I’ll be see looking and listening more carefully to see what else might be there. Watch this space!
OK, that isn’t a swift, it’s a blackbird. But I think the title works better with ‘swift’, for the alliteration and the alternative meaning. This isn’t a blog post about eating a sandwich quickly, it’s me trying to come up with a title that’s more original than ‘A day in the life of my garden’. Blackbirds, like swifts, are often around at the start and end of the day, so they ‘sandwich’ the rest of the activity.
Swifts are only here from May to August, and I don’t always see or hear them. But if it’s fine and warm I’m lucky enough to have regular screaming parties, when they race low over the rooftops. On the day I wrote this, there were up to ten at a time, and they were still around at lunchtime. I think that’s when I decided to forget all the chores and tasks I’d set myself, and just hang out with the wildlife for a few hours. I thought I might read or snooze – but then I noticed the spiders.
When I spotted a raspberry leaf folded over, I thought the caterpillars that decimated the plants last year were back, but it turned out to be a spider with a nest of eggs. On the other side of the garden, there was another one, this time in a dead leaf that was hanging in the lilac shrub. I got out my spider ID chart and I think it’s a comb-footed spider. It doesn’t really matter what we call it though, as I was just interested in looking at her and watching her methodically bring the edges of the leaf together to protect the eggs.
Meanwhile, the swifts were coming and going, but impossible for me to photograph. The day before, I’d done the Big Butterfly Count almost by accident. Eating lunch in the garden, I counted five different types in 15 minutes: comma, red admiral, small white, holly blue and gatekeeper, so later I logged the. There were lots of bees and hoverflies too, and I’d been thinking about how we’d provided more for pollinators this year. Some plants, such as verbena, thyme and marjoram, were deliberately added to the lavender and perennial wallflower we already had, but growing runner beans is an added bonus as the bright red flowers are popular with bees too. I also let the purple toadflax in from the alley.
The next garden visitor to pop up was this ladybird larva. I know this is a harlequin because of how spiky it is – an indicator of its fearsomeness, perhaps. We’re not supposed to like them because they outcompete our native ladybirds, but I think the larvae look pretty striking. Reassuringly, I later found a 7-spot adult on the beans, then a 2-spot in the silver birch, and I’ve found a couple of 16-spots lately, so the balance seems ok in my garden.
Next up, something less common. Surprising, in a way, given we don’t have any grass, but I’d already seen several in the alley edges near the flowerbed. Still, it took me a moment to realise what I was looking at – a grasshopper! Then a bit later, on the other side of the garden, there was a cricket. Look closely at the cricket (the green one, facing the opposite way to the grasshopper) and you can just see the long antenna extending beyond the leaf.
The grasshopper hopped off as soon as I photographed it, but the cricket was still there, in exactly the same position, three hours later. What was it doing? The next morning it had moved slightly, and after about 24 hours, I couldn’t find it any more. Talking of intriguing behaviour, that photo of the blackbird shows it in a typical pose, on its way to my neighbour’s garden with food for its chicks. Unusually though, he stayed there for a minute or two, then began quietly singing a short song. He was close enough that I could see his throat moving, but otherwise he was like a ventriloquist, with his beak shut. He kept an eye on me and kept singing while I got a bit closer, then moved to a different part of the garden. Soon, the female flew over from the direction of the nest, and landed on the opposite trellis. The male then flew over to her, there were some loud calls, and they both seemed to fall into the shrubs. All was quiet for what seemed like ages, then I heard some rustling. I was a bit concerned, so I crawled around, trying to peer under the shrubs. The female popped her head out, then retreated. A few more minutes and the male flew out and perched on the apple tree, beautifully posed with some roses behind him. He looked rather ruffled, but I guess he was trying to get rid of parasites.
After a bit of preening, he spotted something, and flew over to where I was sitting to grab a few flying ants that were crawling around near my feet. Then he was off. I didn’t see the female come out, so maybe she flew off while I was distracted watching him preen. It was all fascinating, and I’m glad I’d taken the time just to be there and observe.
After the blackbird, it was time to go in, but I put my camera out that night to see how many hedgehogs were visiting. At dusk there were still swifts overhead, and the blackbird singing his full song from a chimney pot nearby. Two hedgehogs came, and there was also a mouse, caught briefly on video three times – each time running off just after the camera triggered, into that mysterious shrubby underworld of slugs and snails, woodlice and worms, the odd grasshopper, and sometimes blackbirds doing who knows what?
The idea behind 30 Days Wild is to do one thing in nature each day in June. It takes place every year, and in this post I’m writing about my experiences in 2022. I think that year was the first time I logged something every day. Maybe that’s because it was easier in some ways, as I was working outdoors at Itchen Valley Country Park, surrounded by nature. But as my other recent blogs have shown, there is plenty of nature in urban and suburban areas, too.
When I took part, I didn’t think about the five pathways to nature connectedness, but now that I’m working for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust on the Wilder Southampton project, they’re on my mind much more. The pathways are: senses, emotion, beauty, meaning and compassion, and I thought it would be interesting to look back at my 30 things, to see if there were any pathways I’d taken more than others.
Some of the things meander across several pathways, such as this jay feather. Sense-wise, I saw and touched it, and it’s something I see beauty in. Possibly though, the most distinct path is emotion because it sparked a real ‘wow’ feeling, which for me is often brought on by something unusual. It also caused envy because someone else saw it first and I really wanted it!
Quite a few of my acts of wildness reflected my compassion. Above you can see the grave I made for a dead mole, and on the first day, I rescued a bee from a cycle path. I recorded two litter picks of green places – litter picks for me are usually about making a place better for wildlife, such as by removing plastic bags and wrappers so birds, hedgehogs and foxes can forage. Providing homes for wildlife is another act of compassion, seen here in the swift nest box and the hedgehog shelter. I also created a stag beetle habitat by sinking logs into my garden, as the grubs need rotting wood. The eighth act of compassion was to make butterfly feeders.
The swift nest box also takes me along the pathway of meaning. Swifts returning in May are a part of nature’s calendar, and something I really look forward to, so even in April I’m checking the Hampshire Swifts group to see if they’ve started arriving. Then I add ‘mine’ to Swiftmapper, and look to see if there are nest sites in my area. They also evoke an emotional response, of anticipation and anxiousness, then excitement and sheer joy when I see they are back. It’s not only the seeing though, it’s the hearing those ‘screaming parties’ as they zoom over at roof height, so it’s also about senses. Because they’re only here for the summer, swifts carry added meaning. Given all this, it’s not surprising they featured three times in my 30 Days Wild.
Looking through my photos, those related to senses were often about seeing, but four involved touch. This photo shows a damaged Long Tailed Tit nest. It was clearly destroyed, so I knew I wouldn’t be disturbing the birds by touching it. It was lined with hundreds of feathers, making it really soft, and the outside was made of moss and lichen, held together with spiders’ webs. Delicate, yet strong.
Wildflower Meadow Survey, Townhill WayPeartree Green Bioblitz
I also used touch during the wildflower surveying I took part in – some plants have rough or hairy leaves, for example, so this can help you to identify them. The five pathways don’t include naming and measuring – facts and figures – as these things alone aren’t always a way to a lasting connection with nature. But for me, part of surveying wildflowers, or taking part in a bioblitz at Peartree Green, is about looking closely – and touching, listening, and sometimes sniffing or tasting, appreciating the beauty and diversity, and just the sheer amazingness of nature! At the bioblitz, where people gather to log everything they can find in one day, if I find a fungus or a beetle that hasn’t been recorded before, I feel a rush of adrenalin. I might not know what it is, or be able to tell it apart from something similar, but that doesn’t matter to me – someone else can do that! So there is emotion there, and compassion too, because showing which species are present might be significant in protecting that place one day. Meaning is another pathway travelled through surveying or citizen science, because the time of year is significant in knowing what you might expect to see.And of course, there is beauty to be found in surveying, if you take a moment to just admire a flower as well as measuring it and counting its petals! Often though, if I see something new to me, I like to find out more about it, as was the case with the gall below (made by an aphid). The first time I saw a pill woodlouse rolled up, I thought it was a bead until I watched it uncurl. Amazing.
Balloon gall on elmPill woodlice ID chart
As I reflect on my 30 Days Wild, and read over this post, it seems that beauty might be my path less travelled. I think that’s because I’m curious and noticing something tends to sparks lots of questions, so out come the books. Perhaps it would be good for me to do more of this for 2023’s 30 Days Wild: crouch down and look at a rocky shore. The patterns, the colours, the shapes. This just caught my eye and I wanted to capture it. It’s still beautiful now.
Does this look like a wildlife haven to you? Does it even look like nature? Maybe not for many people. For some people in Southampton, ‘nature’ means the New Forest. For others it might mean one of our local nature reserves, such as Miller’s Pond, Peartree Green or Chessel Bay, or maybe a park. But I’d hazard a guess that not many people would spend time searching for wildlife on a verge like this. To be fair, I didn’t either – but I did get fed up seeing all the litter around our precious dandelions. So I put a post on the Woolston Wombles group to say I’d be doing a litter pick on Saturday 15 April. There were six of us on the day, and we started here, on the verge off Victoria Rd with the ongoing Centenary Quay development seen through the fence, and a little bit of the river visible too.
It was a gloriously sunny day, but a little chilly so I was surprised when very soon, I found a six-spot ladybird. I wasn’t sure it was alive, but carefully used a leaf to put it on this dandelion, and it soon perked up. After that, I decided to tread more carefully. I noticed a few mushrooms like the one below, most with chunks eaten. There were also red dead nettles and of course more dandelions.
Nibbled mushroomRed DeadnettleDandelions
Then we found a two-spot ladybird. Although common and widespread, numbers are dropping, so it was worth logging on iRecord, one of a number of recording schemes used by citizen scientists to monitor our wildlife. The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch is probably the best known example.
Another interesting find along this stretch of verge was this hoverfly. When I worked in outdoor learning, I found that young people were often scared of hoverflies, thinking they were wasps and would sting. Some hoverflies have yellow and black markings to mimic wasps and therefore put off predators such as birds. But they are harmless to humans, and important pollinators. They’re also rather beautiful, I think.
Where were we again? Oh yes, opposite a busy junction that leads from a shopping street to a large supermarket in one direction, with a housing development past the library in the other direction. In a few metres of verge strewn with plastic and other litter, we’d found these six wild species. Remarkable, isn’t it? We then turned the corner to go down Keswick Road to the verge I’d written about in an earlier blog post, A Sense of Place. Opposite is the Southampton Veterans Drop-in Centre, which was open, and the kind staff there made us tea and coffee. Here we are enjoying it – along with the sunshine, the company and the wildlife!
Naturally, we picked the shrubby area around the centre too to thank them, and there I found a bumblebee that moved before I could get a photo. Just across the road, Lisa was picking the shrubbery next to the car park (see A Sense of Place) and realised while drinking her coffee that she’d brought a guest along on her sleeve – a Common Green Shield Bug! She returned it before we moved on, as did Archie, when he later acquired one. Was it the same one? I’ve included both photos if you want to look closely and make your own mind 🙂
What made this hour-and-a-half so much fun? The sunshine helped, the company definitely did too (not to mention the coffee) but for me it was the unexpectedness of finding so much wildlife. My friends and colleagues are used to me singing the praises of urban wildlife, of the overlooked and underappreciated (dandelions, anyone?) but this experience really made me reflect on how much joy people can find if they notice the nature around them. I’d thought about creating Woolston treasure trail back in January when I wrote ‘A Sense of Place’, and now I have more to add to it.
A footnote to this story: a few days later, I bumped into a neighbour who was recovering from surgery. Advised to take gentle exercise, she had for the first time walked through the alley behind our houses and come across the flowerbed that my partner and I look after. She was amazed, saying it really lifted her spirits. This is a bed currently dominated by Grape Hyacinth, nothing special. But it sits in a not-so-beautiful patch of tarmac and breezeblocks, and her comments made me realise what a difference even something like this can make. Just wait until you see in in summer, I thought!
Dandelion Nature 