I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about my garden:
It may be small, but I know we are lucky to have an outdoor space to call our own, and that we have the freedom to do what we like in it. And if you haven't guessed by now, we manage it with wildlife in mind. In the corner near the shed we have a small pond which is home to frogs and newts. Opposite the shed we have ferns, and there is a hole in the fence for hedgehogs to use. On each side we have a wide variety of native plants
I'll be honest, my partner does all the planning and organising, I just do all the heavy lifting etc. We have spent the last 5 years working on it, and it is starting to look how we want it to. And at the height of Summer its a lovely place to sit in the sun and relax.
But what if I told you there was more to the garden than just making it look pretty? That between the plants and underneath the leaves that the garden is teaming with life? Would you be surprised to find out that in this little garden of 50m2 that we have recorded no less than 831 species of Plant, Animal and Funghi.
You did read that correctly: 831 species have been recorded. And we are just beginning to scratch the surface.
It started with her interest in counting butterflies, it got more serious when I started recording moths, and since then we have started to make a note of all different things we have seen in the garden over the past few years. And that ranges from lepidoptera (which includes both butterflies and moths), to bees and wasps, birds, flies, beetles, hoverflies, spiders, flowers, mushrooms, lichens and even grasses). Every new 'thing', be it plant or animal, is celebrated and photographed and then added to the list.
It reached a point where we needed to update our list from several sheets of paper to proper spreadsheet, so we could accurate keep track and organise our data.
Lists of Bee and Wasp species
List of various Fly species
We are amazed to have found so many different species in this tiny little space in just 5 years of careful gardening and keeping our eyes open. That is all there is to it!
It is amazing to think of all that life living quite literally under our noses. I wonder what else we will find over the next few months and years...?
Please Note:
1 - It is important to make sure our lists are accurate, so any species which are hard to ID we get a second opinion from an expert. If we can't be certain an ID is correct we don't record it.
2 - As you may remember from an earlier post, for any species we can ID correctly we send the record of it to the relevant recording society for their records
Beetle - Scarlet Lily Beetle
Amphibian - Common Frog
A selection of flowers, some of which we have planted, others have self-seeded.
Mushroom - Common Puffball