wildlife

[Lesley Cox]

I'm sure both wasps and bees have a fondness for ivy. They can be seen clustered over the flower heads whenever there is pollen visible. The result is a massive crop of ivy seeds which birds, especially blackbirds and startling spread around my garden in many thousands every year. Every seed germinates and it is a full time job pulling the seedlings, ideally as they're very young and germinating as the slightly older plants get such a hold on the earth that I would need a forester or a bomb squad to control them over the year. We have a pear tree just coming into bloom now, at about 12 metres. It is huge, but an ivy climbing it has now reached the top and will probably kill in in a yea or two. The ivy trunk has so entwined and become incorporated in the pear trunk that it is impossible to identify which is which and so kill the ivy without killing the pear as well. I hate ivy.

[Hoy]

It seems wasps have a special fondness for ivy!

Gerd

Gerd,

Also brown bees (Apis mellifera mellifera) and the common drone fly (Eristalis tenax) love the ivy!

Brown honeybees in the ivy.




Common drone fly in the ivy!

[Hoy]

................ We have a pear tree just coming into bloom now, at about 12 metres. It is huge, but an ivy climbing it has now reached the top and will probably kill in in a yea or two. The ivy trunk has so entwined and become incorporated in the pear trunk that it is impossible to identify which is which and so kill the ivy without killing the pear as well. I hate ivy.

Lesley,

My experience is that it take many years for an ivy to kill a tree. And I don't think strangling is the worst case but the weight of the ivy. I have an ivy in my garden and it hasn't yet killed the birch tree it climbs. The diameter of the tree is 30cm.

[ian mcdonald]

The ivy flowers are a good late source of nectar for insects.

[ashley]

Apart from being such a wonderful resource for insects and birds, ivy provides surprising arboreal opportunities for small animals we normally think of as restricted to the ground.
A week or two ago I was astonished to meet a pygmy shrew almost face-to-face through our kitchen window as it skittered nonchalantly among the ivy stems on the wall

[cohan]

It seems wasps have a special fondness for ivy!
Gerd

I often wonder what flowers smell like to insects-- there are many of these sorts of small, not brightly coloured flowers which attract many pollinators, often wasps of many sizes and other sorts of predatory insects ( many of which  nectar as an important part of their life cycle), small moths, beetles, etc..

[Tristan_He]

Funnily enough, it was a nice day a few days ago and our ivy was absolutely humming with all kinds of insects (except for wasps, thankfully).









The highight for me was definitely the red admirals though. I'm also hoping that the holly blue butterflies made it through our dreadful summer. They have a strange life cycle with two generations per year. The caterpillars of the spring generation feed on developing holly buds, and the autumn generation ivy. A few years ago we cut our ivy back too hard and lost our holly blues, but we have let it grow and this spring saw a female laying on the holly. Fingers crossed...

[Hans J]

yesterday we saw by a walk on Kaiserstuhl our first green lizard (Lacerta bilineata )
The animal was so friendly to wait a little that we could make ( a more or less ) good picture

Have fun
Hans 

[Maggi Young]

yesterday we saw by a walk on Kaiserstuhl our first green lizard (Lacerta bilineata )
The animal was so friendly to wait a little that we could make ( a more or less ) good picture

Have fun
Hans 

Ohh! He  is  so handsome!  You are  lucky  to see  him!

[Hans J]

we think this animal was laying in the sun ....yesterday was a very nice and sunny day ( now is rain )

[ArnoldT]

Araneus diadematus Cross orb-weaver

[cohan]

yesterday we saw by a walk on Kaiserstuhl our first green lizard (Lacerta bilineata )
The animal was so friendly to wait a little that we could make ( a more or less ) good picture

Have fun
Hans 

cool

[fermi de Sousa]

Once again the shade-house was invaded by a blackbird at the end of August.
At the end of September the nest was empty as the fledglings went off to fend for themselves in the undergrowth (to be fed by mum and dad I presume!).
We have a love-hate relationship with blackbirds as they are an introduced pest but their song is so memorable (at least to this old Beatles lover!)
cheers
fermi

[cohan]

Once again the shade-house was invaded by a blackbird at the end of August.
At the end of September the nest was empty as the fledglings went off to fend for themselves in the undergrowth (to be fed by mum and dad I presume!).
We have a love-hate relationship with blackbirds as they are an introduced pest but their song is so memorable (at least to this old Beatles lover!)
cheers
fermi

cute. Somehow that Euro bird was not introduced here, the local Turdus species is the native American Robin- with similar egss of 'Robin's Egg Blue'.. we have introduced house sparrows (not in the countryside) and starlings (not on the acreage, they are out in the open).. our blackbirds are unrelated marsh birds.

[cohan]

Araneus diadematus Cross orb-weaver

Love the orb weavers, but don't see them often..