30 Days Wild June 2018 Week 1

Week 1 of 30 Days Wild began with a week of hot sunny weather here in Scotland. Lets hope the rest of the month is as good as the first week has been!
On Day 1 we began steadily with Peter dismantling, washing and refilling all the bird feeders around the garden. Water containers were refilled - although this has been a daily task as the hot weather has evaporated the water fairly quickly - and the birds having their baths has splashed the water everywhere!
Day 2 took us to a village locally where we attended a community moth trapping event.

Six traps were set around the village on Friday night and opened this morning. The traps contained good numbers of moths. The “spectacular” were in attendance  – Poplar Hawk moth, Small Elephant moth, Puss moth and Elephant Hawk moth.

Others may have been smaller but no less spectacular - such as Pebble Prominent, Brimstone, Iron prominent and scorched Wing.

                       

The community were blown away with the quantity and quality of moths in the traps. As moth-ers ourselves we enjoyed it too. The local Environmental Information Centre collected all the information and reported back that over 400 moths were trapped, with 77 species identified. Of these, 18 species had not been previously recorded locally.

Day 3 dawned warm and still, but we had rain overnight. Nothing torrential but enough to give all the plants in the garden a good drink. Today was an opportunity to wander around our own garden and look a bit closer at some of the plants. We often think we know what a flower looks like – but look even closer and you may be surprised

                         

We awoke to a grey, cloudy morning on Day 4 but it was still very warm and humid.

We have had a couple of carrier bags full of pine cones sitting in the greenhouse for a while now. Today was the day to top up our bug boxes where the original contents had settled. A bit fiddly to unstaple the chicken wire but by the time it was restapled they looked much better, and there are still some cones left. Perhaps another box somewhere else in the garden?

                     

                   

We also set two moth traps at a local farm this evening.

It is always exciting to open the traps, never knowing what might be inside. It was nice and cool, although breezy, when we set off to collect and empty them on Day 5 but the sun came out as we drove to the site. Choosing to sit in a shaded spot in the hope of keeping the moths as calm as possible turned out to be much chillier than we anticipated. The wind blew straight down the track!
The moths were quite calm however so we had to grin and bear it. Not a huge number of moths -  52 of 19 species. The details will be passed onto the County Moth Recorder.
                   

Noticed when I wandered around the garden on Day 3 that one of our foxgloves had a bud at the top of the stem. We have seen this aberration before, a few years ago - apparently it is called peloria. Well Day 6 sees the flower open.

                           

Had a trip out on Day 7 to look around an old family house in Cumbria. The house was amazing but the garden had 43 species of tree collected by an ancestor as his arboretum! Some rare and specialist trees that looked majestic in their beautiful setting.