After the boys of summer have gone – the annual report.

Ask anyone around my age(ish) to name as many “summer pop/rock songs” as they can and many might mention the ex-Eagles’ Don Henley and his “Boys of summer” from 1984 – still one of my favourite songs.

The strange thing is that if one listens to the lyrics: “Nobody on the road. Nobody on the beach. I feel it in the air. Summer’s out of reach” (etc etc) ... it becomes pretty obvious that the song has very little to do with summer – much more to do with the passing of summer (or time), entering autumn (or middle age) - and a questioning of the past.

For me though, the “boys of summer” are my favourite birds of all.... swifts (even though I’m sure they’re boys and girls of course) and now we’re into September, it does seem the (avian) “boys of summer” have indeed gone back to the Congo.

We’ve once again had a hot, sunny week this week (until today – Friday 6^th September 2013) and even if summer isn’t officially over (it may get warmer and sunnier again next week), for now it feels like it.

I saw three swifts pass over the garden on the 29^th August this year and even though I’ve not failed to see my last swift of the year in the first week of September since moving to this house two summers ago... I certainly think those three swifts overhead on the 29^th August may well be my last of this particular year.

It’s a very sad time of year for me, as I’ve mentioned before – and combined this year with the beginning of the unscientific, senseless and politicised badger cull & the fact that I’ve very recently discovered one of our adult hedgehogs dead next door (eaten by foxes I think – and at present EVERY single hedgehog counts) – the end of meteorological summer 2013 is weighing pretty heavily on me at present.

That all said, I can console myself with the fact that we’ve had the best summer (in terms of sunny, warm weather) since I started properly dating my (now) wife in 2006 and it seems like moths, dragonflies and butterflies have all had a great 2013, unlike the dreadful year they had last year. I have another year of attracting swifts to the new “Swift Half” (our house) which will mean a year closer to them nesting with us – and I can spend the winter designing and building a new swift hotel for the “boys of summer” to investigate next May.

So now that the boys of summer have gone, I’d like to take this opportunity to produce an “end of year report” for 2012-13.  For those that don’t know, I document sightings of interest each year (or have done for the past two anyway) from September 1^st one year to August 31^st the next, in the garden and within a mile of the house – and my annual end of year reports pretty-well coincide nicely with the departure of the best birds of all, back to Africa.

Unlike last year’s (first) lonnnnnggggg annual report, this will be a far more succinct report, based mainly around new species recorded in the garden or neighbourhood - and notable differences between 2011/12 (report number 1 last year) and 2012/13.

I’ll try my best to avoid phenological references as much as I can* for a number of reasons – the most important being in general, amateur phenology is about as unscientific as one can get (sorry Tony) and if it even approached being scientifically rigorous, one would need to carry out phenological recording (and NOTHING else) for multiple decades before one could even begin to investigate patterns and trends. I simply haven’t got the time  (or the inclination) to even begin such a project. * I’ll make the odd phenological reference however – mainly with regards to swifts (of course!)

Please also note, this report is primarily aimed as a reminder for me in years to come, so as such may be bulleted and brief in parts…

Introduction and garden work completed in year 2.

Anna and I moved into our current house (our first owned) two years ago to the week. A year ago I wrote a long, detailed wildlife report and this is the second, after our second year here.

• I’ve put up a cedar swift box (with camera) supplied by the excellent HANDYKAM and very kindly given to me for Christmas 2012 by my beautiful wife.
• I’ve dug in a wildlife pond (rigid shell to avoid being punctured by herons’ beaks or cats claws – and planted native pond plants therein.
• I’ve planted a mulberry tree (kindly given to us by my cousin Richard to celebrate my son’s birth on December 1^st 2012) as well as two Joseph Rock Sorbus saplings (given to me by Anna for my birthday 2013).
• I’ve taken down the dead whitebeam in the front garden, and created a log pile in the back garden from it – adding to the buried eucalyptus roots in which we know we have a stag beetle colony.
• I’ve severely cut back the two leylandii nearest the house, to allow any prospecting swifts clear access to nest sites in the gable end of the house and also to allow more light into the garden.

Weather from September 2012 to August 2013 inclusive (a brief summary).

• Unlike 2011-2012, this year (from September 2012 to August 2013 inclusive) brought us a very cold spring (we were frozen until the middle of May 2013) – so everything was a little late off the mark.
• We also were treated to the warmest, sunniest, driest summer since 2006 (at least) with a prolonged heatwave in July. This mainly arose because the jet-stream sat over northern Scotland in the summer of 2013, unlike the last 7 or so summers when it sat over northern France.

Wildlife summary (in general by scientific class).

Insects. Arachnids. Other invertebrates.

• Mediterranean tube web spiders now reached four in number (at least) in the side passage outside the back door.
• Bad year for ladybirds here with only 14-spot ladybirds showing in any number at all.
• Red Mason bees and Willoughby’s leaf cutter bees have taken over the bee hotels in the garden in large numbers.
• Still hornets present – in fact one was attracted to the moth trap in August 2013
• Tree bumblebees have nested in the roof again.
• Wasps have produced a subterranean nest in the spoil heap by the back wall (a result of digging out the pond in February).
• The “good” weather has meant that I’ve been able to run the moth trap pretty-well all summer (until the transformer broke at the very end of August), meaning I have recorded around 60 new spp. of moth in the garden this year – highlights being Poplar hawk moth and small elephant hawk moth.
• My first ever rose chafer flew through the garden on a hot June day this year and stag beetles revealed their presence in the garden again like last year (really chuffed with that still).
• Three new species of butterfly in the garden this year including purple hairstreak, marbled white and ringlet.
• Dragonflies (once again) didn’t really appear in earnest until August (even with my new pond dug) with a broad-bodied chaser (briefly), followed by a common darter then finally, a pair of southern hawkers.
• No obvious flying ant days this year.
• No constant whining of midges all summer (as there was last year in the garden due to the constantly wet conditions).
• Other new spp. for the garden included Ashy mining bee and my favourite sp. of jumping spider – Marpissa muscosa (the Fencepost jumping spider).
• For a complete list of new spp. observed in the garden this year, please see table at the end of the blog post.

Amphibians. Reptiles.

• Dug in new pond in late February / early March 2013 to provide breeding opportunities for the numerous local frogs and (with luck) newts eventually, as well as an amphi/herpe “home” in thick foliage by the pond. (corrugated iron sheet).
• Still suffering from one of our cats bringing frogs into the house – I have little doubt that the frog population must have decreased this year (even with the addition of the pond).

Birds.

• Last swift of 2012 seen flying over house on 1^st September
• New sp. in garden in October 2012 – Chiffchaff.
• Redwings started arriving in mid October 2012
• October 2012 in general saw the garden fill up with birds again, including coal tits, goldcrests and goldfinches.
• Jays returned in late November 2012, peaking at FIVE in the garden at one time in Spring 2013.
• 2012/13 was a BIG waxwing year – I visited a 70-strong flock 2 miles away all winter.
• I also spent the winter following our local little owls (which returned to their traditional breeding site as early as January 1^st 2013) and a barn owl which roosted in a hollow tree at a nearby farm. The barn owl would pair up in the spring, which gave me real hope for a successful owl year. Unfortunately neither the little owl pair, nor the barn owls bred successfully – a sad end to summer 2013.
• We were visited by a lone fieldfare throughout the snow of January 2013 – but that bird was killed and eaten by our big female sparrowhawk before the month was out.
• New garden sp. in January’s snow – two pied wagtails.
• The new pond was visited once by the local grey heron. It now has a handful of ponds to stalk, in the neighbourhood.
• First swallows were seen in the sky on 23^rd April 2013, followed by the first swifts on 7^th May 2013 (very late for me).
• First ever cuckoo heard from the garden at dusk (21:45) on 2^nd June 2013.
• We had a blackbird hatch two from four eggs in the poplar tree but the nest was raided by an unseen avian thief before that nest properly got going. Main suspect was the visiting great spotted woodpecker, but it could have easily been a magpie or jackdaw also.
• Juvenile green woodpecker drinks from the pond in July’s heat.
• Last (3) swifts of the year (as mentioned at the start of this blog post) on 29^th August 2013 – they’ve been screaming ‘round the house pretty-well every day since mid May in 2013 – attracted by my swift calls no doubt – but not one has fully investigated one of the three nesting spots I’ve created for them yet, even though they’ve been VERY close. I have high hopes for them to do so before too long – I hope next summer?

Mammals.

• One adult fox snuck into the garden in broad daylight in the spring of 2013 – but I chased it out after it tried to get out via the hen run. No hens (or foxes) were hurt.
• One “teenage” (young) fox snuck into the garden via the hedgehog tunnel in the summer of 2013, at night (captured by trailcam) but didn’t stay more than 10 seconds.
• Clearly the local foxes have bred successfully and are very noisy in surrounding gardens (and the school’s grounds) each night, but there is little evidence other than the above, of the foxes regularly using our back (hen) garden.
• I put in a hibernaculum in the Autumn of 2012 after hearing a lone hog crashing through next door’s garden one night – and dug tunnels under all our fences to connect at least four of our gardens for the local hog(s?).
• Within hours, the hog was exploring our garden – and within days it had set up home in our hibernaculum. I’m not sure whether it hibernated with us – but come late spring it re-appeared in the garden again.
• At the height of summer, TWO hogs were captured courting on trailcam – it became obvious then that our original hog was a female and the new-comer was a male. Could we expect wee hoglets soon?
• Unfortunately not, as in August 2013, I made the sad discovery of a hog pelt the other side of our Fence (in our lovely neighbour Pip’s garden). I can only assume it was had by a fox.
• I have cleaned out the empty hibernaculum, put a camera inside and when I set up the trailcam in the garden for the autumn, I desperately hope that we have a hog left…. Time will tell I guess, but this  hog story started so well…. And for now has ended so sadly.
• On a more positive note, I still derive great pleasure from the fact that we have at least one (sometimes two) pipistrelle (common I think) bats hunting over and through OUR garden each dusk during the summer – the only bats I can see in the “hood”.

Plants. Fungi.

• We grew no sunflowers nor cornflowers this year (unlike last), preferring instead to leave that plot to seed naturally. What a result! Campions, poppies, salad burnet, wild carrot – a great success.
• ½ the large plot of lawn was left to “meadow” again – another great success with hundreds of creeping buttercup flowers appearing, then later in the year hundreds of clover flowers and birds-foot trefoil.
• No clustered bonnets (AT ALL) unlike the constant outbreaks last year, but horse mushrooms and orange peel fungus instead.
• Most blossoms and flowers appeared later than normal due to the cold May – the apple blossom didn’t really appear until the third week of May on its “ON” year – many hundreds of apples formed in 2013, unlike last year where there were maybe only half a dozen in total.
• The polar flowered around my birthday and started to unfurl its leaves around then also.
• The pond plants all flowered throughout June.
• Goldenrod (a late flowerer always) started to flower around the end of July.

Hopes for next year

Owing to my continued poor health, even though I managed to do a fair amount this year, there’s still a whole lot more to be done.

I intend to dig out the vast majority of both borders and fertilise with local horse manure. The aim is to plant a great deal of insect-pollinated plants such as red valerian, buddleia and tobacco plants (for moths mainly I admit – the bees already have their invasive goldenrod!)

I also intend to spend this winter (2013/14) designing and erecting a new 2-berth swift hotel to be screwed into the apex of the roof before they return next May.

Summary.

2012-13 was a really good year for the garden, a “settling” year and a year for the pond to bed in. We’ve had a great year for insects (especially moths and dragonflies) and some promising signs re. hedgehogs.

The swifts have been buzzing around the house all summer – attracted by the swift call lure – and they surely will be breeding with us soon…..

Roll on year three!

Below is a table showing all “new sp.” that I’ve noticed in the garden for the first time this year (from September 2012 to August 2013 inc).