There is quite a lot to see on the plot this month as the weather warms up and the sun comes out. It may even mean we see fewer slugs and snails!
Picking raspberries in the evening of the 13th of July, this small moth landed on one of my containers. I think it is a Clouded Silver, possibly male because it is quite clouded. It is a very small moth and hung around for ages.
The caterpillar food is hawthorn, blackthorn and cherry all of which we have a lot of in the wildlife garden.
On July 12th there were three Common Blue Damselflies hovering and flitting around the pond. They are electric blue and every now and then they settled on the leaves of the water lilies just long enough for me to take a photograph.
The British Dragonfly Society's identification site is very good. Originally I thought this was a dragonfly but when resting its wings fold back together and its eyes are separated on its head making it a damselfly.
One of the nursery schools that visit the garden released some tadpoles into the pond earlier on in the year only for the children to see these 'shrimp-like things' start to eat the tadpoles straight away. I suspect that the shrimp-like things were the larval stage of the damselfly as they will eat anything living that is smaller than themselves.
On the 1st of July a Cinnabar moth floated by me. They are very distinctive and therefore easy to identify. The caterpillars are the orange and black stripey ones that feed and crawl all over groundsel and Ragwort. Some of their habitats are sand dunes and heathland so it isn't surprising that we have them on the allotments.
I have been watching this anthill being built for several weeks now and I don't think it will be long before the ants fly. This is a black ant nest and when I disturbed it a bit, I saw wings. It is quite amazing that the ants all fly on the same day. It is opposite the pond behind the Alchemilla mollis.
The winged ants are both male and female and fly to mate. Unfortunately, the males die after mating and the females lose their wings and set off to establish their own nest. However, this only happens if they are not eaten by the seagulls that circle round and round scooping them up.