Long-tailed tits

A very noisy flock of about 8 long-tailed tits passed through my front garden. They first appeared in the lilac tree but by the time I got my camera they had flown across to our neighbours garden opposite the track.

They foraged for a while before slowly moving on up the track (heading north away from our house and eventually disappeared down into the lower gardens.

About 20 minutes later, a noise flock (probably the same long-tailed tits) headed back south along the gardens behind ours, sending a few minutes in the apple tree before flying off.

I have seen them in the local park and it is possible where these birds and come from and returning to.

Bees and goldfinches

Along with the fuscia, lavender and nastursium the hebe continues to attract and provide food for white-tailed bumble bees.

The recent cold snap sadly finished off the remaining morning glory flowers.

A small flock of gold finches has been travelling back and forth along the gardens.

Morning glory bee visits

The morning glory plants that I grew from seed are now in full flower.

The large flowers are attracting a large number of bees, such as white tailed bumble bee and honey bees as well as hoverflies.

A small number of common carder bees have also been visiting the flowers.

More fox observations

One of the foxes was up on next doors shed roof early this morning in amongst the windfall apples. Last night, as I walked down the road to the shop, I saw 2 of the foxes. The first was quite close, investigating
around a car across the road from our house. When it saw me coming it turned and disappeared up a track between the houses.

The second fox was further up the road and sitting upright like a dog. It too eventually disappeared up another track between the houses, which eventually joins with the previously mentioned track. Normally the foxes stick to the gardens and the back alleyways until after dark. We have still been noticing the regular travels of the dog fox through our garden at 9.00pm

Two nights ago, we were spoken up by foxes at 2.00am. The vixen and the cub were running around our car and making noises at something under the car. At first we thought they may have cornered a cat, even though my observations of these foxes throughout the year suggested they were wary of the cats and avoided them if possible. Infact on several occasions the cats seemed to gang up on the foxes several cats surrounding a fox and staring. But it turned out be be the dog fox. They then ran around chasing each other playfully.

I was really pleased to see that the cub is now looking like a small fox, where as before it looked stunted and more like a puppy. It was also interesting to see them together still as cubs are normally ejected from the den in September to fend for themselves (which is why there is often a high number of young foxes killed on the road in September and October.

We could hear the foxes even thought we could not always see them. However we did observe the dog fox drinking from the pond in our back garden.

Brown carder bee

There are still a lot of bees active in and around our garden. These are mainly honey bees and two banded bumble bees.However some bees fly through and don't settle making a positive ID difficult

There are still a few brown carder bees, relatively rare in Sussex, visiting.

I have seen them in our garden however these 2 pictures were taken just outside in the track. While they visited the occasional mallow flower, they favoured the last of the blackberry flowers.

Red Admiral

There are still a few butterflies visiting the garden. Gate keepers and this striking red admiral butterfly.

It was once thought that all red admirals died out ion the winter months, replaced by butterflies the following the year flying across the channel. Due to the milder winters, a few red admiral butterflies do overwinter as adults as they are seen in January and February - too early to be migrants from the continent.

Dragonflies

I noticed this dragonfly resting on our garden path yesterday.

I think its a common darter, possibly a female.

Today, I noticed this stunning dragonfly. My first glimpse was a dragonfly passing the window. When I went out to investigate, I accidentally disturbed it from our sunflowers where it had been resting. It flew out of our garden and I carefully followed.

It had landed on a rock rose bush overhanging our garden wall. I think its a male southern hawker. This looked like the dragonfly I had seen patrolling our road on 24th August.

I was able to slowly move really close and got this close up picture with the road and car opposite in the same picture, taken on wide angle.