Tag Archives: butterflies

Wild flowers at College Lake

26 Thursday Jul 2012

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What a difference a week makes. The weather is fantastic and yesterday we had a beautiful day at College Lake near Tring. This is an old quarry that is now managed by Beds, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust as a nature reserve. There are two lakes and a range of other habitats (woodland, grassland, open meadow, wildlife garden etc) in this lovely chalk downland.

For more information see BBOWT website http://www.bbowt.org.uk/

There are plenty of bird hides around the site with a charming one at ground level next to a shady pond with a frogs’ eye view of things. The new visitor centre has refreshments available at some times of day and great views over the reserve.

Yesterday we were looking at all aspects of wildlife, especially birds, and at the start of our walk we were treated to the sight of two hobbys in the cloudless sky. We also saw oystercatchers, redshanks, lapwings and a variety of gulls.

For me though, the real treat was the variety of wild flowers in the area providing nourishment for many beautiful butterflies. Unfortunately butterflies are not easy to identify or photograph but they included gatekeepers and marbled whites.

Here are some of the wild flowers we saw. I hope I have identified them correctly.

Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa)

Pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis)

Common Centaury (Centaurium minus)

Melilot (Melilotus officinalis)

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)

Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare)

Yellow-wort (Blackstonia perfoliata)

The wild garden

07 Monday May 2012

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March being pleasantly warm there were quite a few butterflies around. The brimstone is always the first about in the spring and a very welcome sight. This year we also saw quite a few peacock butterflies. I hope the cold weather in April has not been too bad for them.

Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the path

The frogs had their usual sex fest (it always seems a little later in this garden than others) and left masses of frogspawn. About two weeks ago there was still mostly a squirming mass of hatched tadpoles on top of the water lily but now they have all gone, and looking yesterday I couldn’t see a single one swimming about.  Something similar happened last year and I can’t tell where they are going. In previous years there have been tadpoles and small frogs galore. There are various predators in the pond, of course, including newts and dragonfly larva but I can’t believe they could have taken all of the tadpoles by now. Are they hiding or has something else happened to them, I wonder?  

Happy frogs, I hope!

The larger pond has probably given me more pleasure than any other part of the garden. Particularly when new here, I spent hours watching pond life. It is so charming to see what seems like a whole other world. It looks delightful but it is a nasty world of predations. One year I spent some time catching water boatmen and flinging them into the undergrowth, believing that they were too numerous and fearful for my tadpoles. I found out later they could fly. Now I leave well alone. To protect the aquatic wildlife I never use chemicals anywhere near the pond.