Invader

Harlequin Ladybird (Harmonia axyridis)

It was there, lurking under the shoe rack, when I went out to the porch to put my trainers on. An invader. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Yet another example of humans just not leaving well enough alone. This is a Harlequin Ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) and it's one species I wish we didn't have in our garden. It's an Asian species that was brought to Europe (and the United States) as a biological agent: a supposedly "biologically friendly" way to control unwanted insect species. Except that it turns out to be very biologically UNfriendly. This large and voracious species has been munching its way across Europe and North America for decades now, outcompeting local ladybird species (and other insects as well) for food. And unlike our native ladybirds, it will happily switch to the eggs and larvae of butterflies, moths, and local ladybirds if aphid prey is scarce. It's a reproduction machine, churning out young from spring right through autumn, which allows it to expand its populations very quickly. Since arriving on the islands in 2004 (when it made its own way across the English Channel), the Harlequin Ladybird has spread across much of the country and is now considered a serious threat to some UK insect populations. Did we squash it after taking its picture? No we didn't. But we probably should have.

Zebras

Common Zebra Spider (Salticus scenicus)

Heading out to the recycling bucket yesterday, I spotted this little hitchhiker catching a ride as I swung the door open. It's a jumping spider called Salticus scenicus, or Common Zebra Spider, and it's found across the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. This one is a female; she has paler legs than a male would have (yellow-brown with darker rings at the joints rather than all dark) and smaller chelicerae (the jaws and fangs just visible in between her front legs). Though she may look rather large and scary in the picture, in real life she's pretty tiny, measuring a mere quarter-inch long.

These spiders tend to hunt from vertical surfaces (like doors). Rather than spinning a web, they leap on their prey, sometimes from a fair distance away. While they generally hunt spiders and insects even smaller than themselves, they have reportedly been recorded taking prey up to three times their own body length!

Two-fer

Common Daisy (Bellis perennis) with unidentified aphid

Now that the pace of spring is beginning to quicken, we're adding new species to the lists "at the rate of knots", which is a British expression for very rapidly indeed! Sometimes, we can even add multiples at once. I took a photo earlier this month of a Common Daisy growing in a corner of the driveway, only to spot the associated aphid once I'd downloaded the picture to my computer. The daisy was an easy one to identify; it's ubiquitous here—self-seeded into nearly every flowerbed, scattered throughout the lawn, springing up through the gravel driveway, etc. It's a flower I've always associated with England, but it's widespread across all of Europe too. Apparently, the word daisy is a corruption of "day's eye", a name presumably given to the flower because it folds itself closed at night. (Chaucer called it "eye of the day" in his prologue to The Legend of Good Women.)

I tried my hand at identifying the aphid too, but I'm quickly learning that we're going to have to become experts at a whole lot of things to keep this project moving forward. (Or, alternatively, we're going to have to find a whole lot of experts who can help us out.) According to this website, there are more than 500 genera of aphids worldwide, a bewildering number of which live in Europe. I'm guessing that with better photos, we may be able to come up with an ID though; those long legs and long antennae suggest perhaps a member of the genus Acyrthosiphon or Amphorophora.

Sweet! Violets...

Right now, it's hard to even think of cutting the lawn — not that we do that very often anyway. But the hundreds of Sweet Violet flowers carpeting the ground will have to die back before I can bring myself to cut their little heads off! The light, sweet odor of the flowers is pervasive in the garden (at least it is when the strong winds we've been having for days isn't blowing the scent to Amsterdam), making it feel like spring is really well on the way. The bumblebees are loving the bounty too, lurching from flower to flower. I'll have to try to get a picture or two so we can add them to the insect list; I'm pretty sure they're all Buff-tailed Bumblebees I've seen so far.

Sweet Violets are native here in Britain, as well as across much of Europe and Asia. And they're widely introduced in North America and Australia now as well, thanks to their beauty and hardiness. As you'd expect with a long-established plant, it's been widely used in herbal medicine since the Middle Ages, and is well-tied to some ancient legends. Supposedly, violets were among the blooms Persephone was gathering when the Greek god Hades abducted her, and the flower was a symbol of ancient Athens as well. It's nice to have a little tie between our garden and that lovely country!

Mini suns

Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

I took this picture of blooming Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) way back on February 21, and it's still blooming today. It's managed to plant itself in a flower border right below the dining room window, where its cheery flowers look like so many tiny suns. Clearly, given its early and extended presence, it's an important nectar plant for any early-emerging bee, butterfly or moth in the area, so we're happy to have it around. It's also a host plant for the larvae of two moth species — Gothic and Small Angle Shades — both of which we caught in our moth trap last summer. References say Coltsfoot spreads by both seeds and rhizomes; I'm guessing this one is seed-spread, since we have no others in the garden. There's a sizable colony on some rough ground a few hundred yards from here, so perhaps the seeds have blown over (or been carried in the plumage of some rummaging bird) from there. As with many plants native to Europe, this species has long been used in herbal medicines. However, it contains numerous alkaloids, some of which can cause severe liver problems, so consuming any part of it is probably best avoided.

In other garden news, we have Common Blackbirds nest-building in a dense bush not far from the house, so that's a sixth bird species confirmed to have nested here!

Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home...

A stroll out to the garage revealed the sudden appearance of a few insects today; the fact that it was well into the 50s, with a warm sun and little wind, probably had something to do with that. Chief among the insects were a number of these cheery little chappies, which probably overwintered somewhere nearby. This is the Seven-spotted Ladybird, one of Britain's (and indeed Europe's) most common ladybirds. For reasons unknown, the local Norfolk name for them (well, for all ladybirds, if we're honest) is "Bishy Barnabee".

The Seven-spotted Ladybird is a generalist, able to thrive in a variety of habitats. This one was headed from the driveway into the nearby grass. Ladybirds feed on aphids. According to the National Insect Week's website, a single ladybird will eat about 5500 aphids during its life, so it's a great species to have in the garden. And yes, there's a distinct lack of originality in ladybird names!

The Lichen List Grows Further: Punctelia subrudecta

This speckly little gem is Punctelia subrudecta. In real life, it measures about an inch across, so this picture is considerably larger than life-sized. It's another new addition to the garden list, found while I was poking around the Japanese Cherry tree in the middle of the garden a few days ago. Lichens are certainly easier to find when the leaves are off the trees; these were on the top side of one of the bigger branches, where they'll be well-shaded for most of the growing season.

The rather flat, rounded lobes are finely sprinkled with tiny, crusty white spots called pseudocyphellae. This is where the little bundles of fungal and algal cells form soralia, which allow the lichen to propagate when they break off in wind and rain. And to think that all this time, this lichen was lurking in plain sight — just in plain sight some eight feet off the ground!

Another lichen: Diploicia canescens

So a bit of exploring today led me to a new lichen for the yard list — and since this is one I know well, I'm a little surprised that I haven't noticed it before. The grey-green lichen to the right of my thumbnail is Diploicia canescens. As you can tell from my nearby thumb, the few colonies I've found so far are pretty small; this is one of the larger ones, which probably means that these are relatively new colonists in our garden. Like the bright yellow-orange Xanthoria parietina colonies around it (see my earlier post about those), this species can tolerate quite high levels of nitrogen pollution, which is a good thing considering all of the surrounding farm fields!

Up close, you can see some of the key features of this lichen. Its color is a very pale grey-green. The lichen's lobes are convex (that is, they curve towards the branch below it) and get wider towards the tips. Unlike the neighboring Xanthoria parietina, it seldom has apothecia (the structures that carry spores). Instead, it clones itself, bundling up small numbers of algal and fungal cells (the building blocks of every lichen) in structures that look a bit like pale, yellowish flour sprinkled on the middle of the lichen. These structures break off in wind and rain, or when an animal walks across them. Now that I've been looking a bit harder, I also found some on the brick wall of our garage. How did I miss it for all of these months?!

The Lichen List: Xanthoria parietina

Now that the leaves are gone from the trees, the lichens that festoon trunks and branches are nicely visible, and I've been working to identify them. A few are easy. This is Xanthoria parietina, which is a very common species across the UK. Xanthoria means "golden-yellow" — certainly a good descriptor of this lichen, particularly when it's in a sunny spot like this, on a branch of our apple tree. In heavy shade, it's grey-green! One of the reasons that this species is so common is that it can tolerate high nitrogen and sulphur dioxide pollution, which is something that many lichens can't. And since our garden is surrounded by plenty of well-sprayed farm fields, our lichens are exposed to plenty of nitrogen. This is one of the first lichens I learned as a neophyte lichenologist, and I find it nearly everywhere I look. It's even widespread in towns and cities, particularly in areas where birds perch and poop.

Up close, you can see some of the key features that distinguish this lichen from some similar ones. The lobes at the edges of the lichen are generally flat (though sometimes turned up at the edges) and very wide — as much as 7mm (nearly a quarter of an inch) on the biggest lobes. That may not seem like much, but for a lichen, that's huge! The apothecia (those small, bright orange bits that look sort of like tiny, well-done pancakes) are numerous, relatively flat and unstalked, and clustered in the middle of the lichen. According to my lichen book, the centers of old specimens often die out, so I guess all of ours are relatively young colonies, as I have yet to find any with dead centers.

Let's Start From the Very Beginning...

So, what are we doing, and why? Last summer, I read one of the opening chapters in a book by our talented friend Adrian Thomas, who's a wildlife gardener with the RSPB. In it, he tells of a woman in Leicester who, some 30 years ago, began documenting all the species that lived in or visited her small suburban garden. Over three decades, she has logged more than 2670 species — including several species of wasps new to science! That has inspired us to a new challenge. We already wanted to expand and improve the "wildlife friendliness" of the property. Now we also hope to document every species that lives in or visits our garden as well.

The bare bones of a great space is already here. We have (as you might have guessed from the blog title) a half-acre to work with. There are a number of well-established trees and hedges. We made a start last year on creating some flower beds, with a view to attracting pollinators. Now we need to start recording. On this blog, we'll post details about some of our finds and create pages listing each of the species we record. Pictures will most definitely be included!

No, it doesn't look like this right now — but it will in a few months!