Garden Wildlife

Think you don’t have time to look at wildlife today (or any day)? Too busy for that long walk? Well how about spending a few minutes (even a few hours) searching the micro habitat that is your back garden, you will be amazed at what you can find in a humble urban garden. This is exactly what I did today, after a bout of food shopping this morning, there was little time for a walk before school finished and so I decided to grab the camera and explore the undergrowth in my small urban (Milton Keynes) garden.

This isn’t the first time I’ve posted about my garden, in fact quite often I grab the camera and see what I can see, but I ought to let you know that I live in Milton Keynes, in the middle of town (there are estates surrounding my housing estate, and my garden is small maybe 10 metres square? (very rough guess), most of it is lawn, but at present there is a wild mess in one corner (lack of gardening time from my other half, I don’t garden).

However it is not bereft of wildlife in fact I have trapped around 200 species of moth, seen multiple Butterflies, dragonflies, birds and even the odd mammal (bats over head). What it does show is that any garden will have something.

Today

In today’s (technically yesterday’s as I’m a day behind with this post sorry) explore I found plenty as well – 2 species of butterfly (Gatekeeper and Large White), 3 species of hoverfly (Marmalade hoverfly, Platycherirus Albimanus and Sphaerophoria Sp. maybe Interrupta tough to ID without genitalia examination).

Platycherirus Albimanus – Great Holm, Milton Keynes

Sphaerophoria Interrupta - Great Holm, Milton Keynes

Sphaerophoria Sp. (maybe Interrupta)- Great Holm, Milton Keynes

Marmalade Hoverfly – Great Holm, Milton Keynes

As well as numerous bees (2 species neither identified); flies (Loads including those pictured – sorry Diptera are not something I am any good at identifying); and assorted other bugs; beetles (Liocoris Tripustulatus, Dicyphus epilobii and Deraeocoris Ruber); and hoppers (Common Froghopper).