Today, I took my camera out after a shower of rain, hoping that it would have brought the slugs out.
There were plenty of large, fat, brown slugs, about
Two slugs coming out after a rain shower
inches long, crawling in the spilled straw on the footpath between the river and the arable fields. I’m sure they’re a pest to the farmer, but I’m assured that hedgehogs like to eat them. The slugs crawled along, opening their breathing holes wide. One reared its head and I saw that it had four horn-like protuberances on its head.
There were plenty of other things to see. Small insects, too small to see properly, whizzed around above the scrub growth on the river bank.
two small moths on a dandelion flower
There are fewer flowers around now, but there were still some on the Himalayan Balsam, and plenty of bees visited them.
Seed pods forming on Himalayan Balsam
There were also a few flowers on the part of the path that had been mowed. The cutting stimulates new growth, and butterflies and other insects fed on the nectar on dandelions and some sort of brassica, maybe wild rape, maybe a wild rocket.
There were still plenty of large white butterflies around, and this tortoiseshell alighted on a dandelion.
Tortoise shell butterfly on a dandelion
Other insects –and spiders – scuttled under the leaf and straw litter. One caught my eye, an exceptionally large, black and white chequered insect.
Molehills showed that there was plenty of life
Large black chequered insect scuttling in the stubble
as well as on top.
Collared doves flapped noisily in the trees, and a pile of feathers on the path looked like a pheasant had a very unpleasant, if not fatal, experience, there. Elderberries are beginning to ripen, and the starlings pick them off as they ripen – so it looks like none for me.
The farmers have been very busy, working late into the night to get the harvest in. Someone was collecting up the bales of straw.
Back home in the woodland garden, the holly berries
Collecting Straw bales
formed, but green. They’ll turn red by Christmas.
I was lucky – just as I got home, there was a clap of thunder and a heavy hailstorm.