Time Flies Like An Arrow

Fruit flies like a banana.

Little devils, I think because I haven't been putting my veg waste out quickly enough in the hot weather I've been inundated with fruit flies, or maybe vinegar flies.

Their favourite activity is to dive headfirst into my wine glass when I'm not looking.

I left the top off a wine bottle because I'd emptied it, and when I looked there must have been at least a dozen of them circling round inside, like a kaleidoscope. I should have invited the Whitethroats in for dinner, or maybe the Sparrows which have been hunting greenfly in the roses. Or maybe borrow a lizard.

"Their favourite activity is to dive headfirst into my wine glass when I'm not looking."

Don't you just hate it when that happens !

Apparently flying ants could be next

"Brits are being warned flying ant day will come early this year - and will be worse than ever before with crazy seagulls that become "drunk" on the little insects"

https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/what-flying-ant-day-2018-10742632

Did someone say the joys of summer lol!

All the best Jan

Oh good point, we never had a real ant-flying day last year. Well not the eruption from all over with all the birds circling to catch them. Just small trickles going up on different days from different places.

I negotiated a pay deal with the spiders and the fruit fly problem has improved.

Despite the heat and the drought affecting many places there still seem to be good populations of various butterflies, dragonflies etc. Only one Hobby out over the reedbeds catching dragonflies and eating them on the wing, maybe the female is still tending young in the nest.

Not a few fields of barley have been harvested already, it's rare for combines to come out in June. Some of the rape is not far off being ripe too, I suspect some of the fields have already been glyphosated. Wheat yields may be down and it's too early to tell what the sugar beet crop will be like, probably good on the sands where they use irrigation but this year there is more being grown on the heavy land which may not do so well. In general there seems to have been more rape and beet grown this year so guess what they will be recommending we eat shortly.

At least the cattle are still looking good on the marshes and watermeadows, I visited a farm recently with some outstanding Herefords including a delightfully laid-back bull.

Chris said:
"Despite the heat and the drought affecting many places there still seem to be good populations of various butterflies, dragonflies etc."

Out and about earlier today we passed some wildflower meadows, the local council has designated a few areas specifically for this. It looked glorious so many different flowers and colours … I really do hope it attracts the wildlife.

All the best Jan

Quite a lot of stuff on the farms where they leave the headlands uncultivated and even sow wildflowers. Most of the good stuff around these parts is owned by the RSPB, Wildlife Trust etc. but some of the farmers also do good things. The council, not so much, nice to know they do good things elsewhere.

Earlier I was bemoaning the lack of moths. I suspect the winter may have seen the early season ones off, they certainly seem to be increasing in numbers now. Not many wasps or hornets though, only the solitary wasps and bees.

One big plus with all the dry weather is the slugs and snails are inactive my hostas are thriving for a change 

Graham said: "One big plus with all the dry weather is the slugs and snails are inactive my hostas are thriving for a change"

Yes, that can be a problem with Hosta's, they are a lovely plant but the slugs and snails do like them.
Apparently a sprinkling of sand around the plants can help, but we used to plant them in a pot surrounded by a few pebbles …

Tips here
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/foliage/hosta/growing-hosta-plants.htm

All the best Jan

Something I gave up growing long ago for that very reason. Delphiniums too.

Hopefully the combination of the winter cold and the drought will knock the populations back a bit.

I few years back I heard a horror story. The farmer's wife was combining rape when the combine started to malfunction and she couldn't retune it, so she called him out with his toolkit.

It turned out that the entire inside of the machine, especially the sieves, was coated with a thick layer of mashed slugs and snails, and it had to go back to the yard to be steam cleaned.

I'm pretty sure the use of slug pellets on the rape fields is responsible for the decreased numbers of Song Thrushes and also for the Hedgehogs I saw in the garden foaming at the mouth and having convulsions before dropping dead. And they tell us "vegetable" oils are heathy. The way they grow and make them, not so much.

OK the fruit fly hordes diminished rapidly, then I got hit by a massive invasion of blowflies.

I guess like most people we have fortnightly bin collections, one week the recycling, next week the non-recyclables. Generally when it's hot I put the garbage out weekly or even more often or the kitchen starts to stink and it gets flyblown with maggots.

This year not so much . . . until this week.

On the other hand I've only seen about two wasps and one hornet all year. Lots of solitary wasps, sand wasps and other species so I guess this is yet another outcome of the climatic weirdness.

Chris was talking bin collection!

We are fortunate to still have a weekly bin collection ... for general rubbish, for recycle and for bottles/glass ... we often wonder for how much longer as many councils are cutting back on collections!

Talking about unwanted flying visitors, I did see some flying ants the other day - it was late in the afternoon and most of them were on the ground! Had they swarmed and were dying I wondered? I'm not sure.

We have seen a few wasps ... including one or two coming in through the open window ... Yuck!

The prettiest flying visitor was a moth, we feel it was a moth and not a butterfly. Quite big and brown, it flew in and out in seconds …

All the best Jan

I think I found out where the flies emanated from - the pig farm up the road has spread pig manure on their stubbles and the beef farm down the road has spread cow dung. I'm half way in between.

No flying ants here yet but yes, after a slow start the moths are booming, all sorts battering against the windows and sometimes coming indoors. All different sizes shapes and colours. I have a very comprehensive moth book but my brain fails to cope with the sheer quantity of different species.

I think the wasps were even feeling the heat today … they all seemed to be crawling on the grass, that's if you could call it grass as it is so parched. I wondered if clover or something was near where they were but couldn't see any. I decided to best leave them to their own devices and walked away.


Do you know in five months time it will be Christmas Eve  
What a thought  

All the best Jan

I think I could see flying ants going up this afternoon but not in the usual profusion and without attracting all the birds. Some years the sky would be full of all sorts including gulls chasing them down just like Swallows.