Toft Invertebrates (1)

The insects are certainly getting active now with lots of different species of flies and plant bugs in the garden so I have quite a task to get them all identified and the species catalogued for my Toft list and recorded on i-record.

Spring Markers 2024

I have been recording the flowers out on approximately the same day in March for at least 15 years.With the warm winter, it is not surprising that this year there are more species in bloom at the moment with Cowslips, Plum blossom, Japonica, Comfrey, Alkanet all a couple of weeks ahead of last year. Certainly I have a very large number of wild or naturalised plants already in bloom and attracting insects such this Early Bumblebee, Bombus pratorum on the Mahonia.

Toft Garden Spiders etc

The wildlife is certainly waking up and spiders are particularly 'active' with some great photographic opportunities among the daffodils (Misumenia vatia, Diaea dorsata, Philodromus cespitum, Clubiona comta, Metallina spp etc. Lots of soil dwelling invertebrates disturbed while weeding and a final small caterpillar probably one of the Wainscot moths.

Peregrine Displays

 Some documentary shots of the courtship display of the Peregrine pair that have returned St Albans. The female has a rather tatty tail but it didn't seem to affect her manoeuvrability. Hopefully someone in our Nature Group with more pixels than my camera has some better shots.