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!

An Unexpected Treat!

We had a major rarity at the bird feeders today. A statement like that is likely to get the mind all a-buzz with potential exotic species that may occasionally pop up. Did some Waxwings stop by? How about an unusual finch of some sort?

No, our major rarity was probably the last species you would think of; it was House Sparrow. Indeed, three of them, which is even more remarkable. Since we moved into our current house just over a year ago, we've been rather saddened by the complete lack of House Sparrows, chirping cheerfully from the guttering as they have done from pretty much every other place I have ever lived. Much maligned for being a 'pest', our humble House Sparrow is a species in catastrophic decline in the UK, with a number of national research surveys from the RSPB and BTO showing staggering declines over the past 25-30 years and this species is now on the Red List as a species of Conservation Concern.

Changes in agricultural policy as well as the effects of air-borne pollution from traffic are implicated in early work on the reasons for this huge decline but research continues into the reasons which will doubtless involve a number of issues. We sometimes hear one or two House Sparrows at the other end of the village when we go on local walks, but they are scarce enough that they rarely make it down to us and this is only the third time we have recorded them in the garden over the past year.

It does seem telling that at one time, we would fashion nestboxes to be 'sparrow-proof' to keep the little devils at bay, but now you can buy specially-constructed boxes in an effort to try and reverse the decline of this bird that is at one and the same time, much loved, but much maligned.

Three's a crowd! Our House Sparrows today on the fatball feeder (a second male is around the back with his tail sticking out at bottom left).

Making a Difference

In this blog, we aim to make a difference - it's a simple as that! As the British countryside becomes more and more impoverished by unsympathetic management and the increasing pressures of an ever-increasing human population, one of the things we can do is to abandon our thoughts of neat lawns and regimental rows of bedding plants and try to turn our gardens into more welcoming places for wildlife.

Just over a year ago, we moved into a property with a half acre of established garden. It's a lovely garden, with plenty of trees and shrubs and already quite a nice range of wildlife, but we aim to improve it. So this blog aims to highlight the species that we find on our half acre and hopefully over time, to record the increases in species that we find due to careful switching of habitat from fully ornamental (as it is now) to something more akin to a semi-natural habitat. We hope you enjoy the ride!!

So here we are, early January - out with the old and in with the new...

Nothing says 'out with the old' more clearly than fire. But this is a managed fire, to get rid of an over abundance of old plant material so that we can get on top of things a little. We'll never just set fire to piles of dead stuff either, as you never know who might be wintering there. Everything has been moved twice and well and truly shaken out, to spare as much as we can before the burn.

'In with the new' begins even before the turn of our calendar year - already our lawn area is sprouting a mass of crinkly leaf rosettes - Primroses will start off our plant species list!

And as for the old garden bench! Well, it's become an ecosystem in its own right now, to the point where we just can't bring ourselves to sit on it! Lichens are complex organisms, formed from a close association between fungi, algae, bacteria and who knows what else; each association gets given a scientific name - but I'll need to leave the identification to Megan!