The birds fall silent in August. If I didn't know that they do this every year, I'd be worried that something had happened to them. As it is, I know that the breeding season is pretty much over, they have stopped defending their territories, and are skulking about as unobtrusively as possible while they moult. Come autumn they will reappear, bright and shiny.
While the garden birds have almost disappeared, the wild geese are becoming more visible. Small flocks have started flying past, honking, and this morning a line of them came over as I was letting the chickens into their run, not calling much, but so low that I could hear the beat of their wings.
I saw more ladybirds today than on any previous day this year. Not that I was counting, but I had a distinct impression of ladybird, scuttling around on the mulch in the beds, and hopping on to my hand as I pruned. It was a dreadful spring for them, according to the papers. I think the cold weather meant that there was a shortage of prey for the nymphs.
Butterfly numbers are building up, too. I am not good at butterfly identification. I know peacocks, commas, and that's about it. I can hazard a guess at speckled wood, and red admiral if I think hard about it, but they are not my field. There were so many white ones fluttering over the Italian garden today, that use of the word 'cloud' would almost have been justified. Do they emerge in mass hatchings? I have a feeling that in the hierarchy of butterfly spotting, white ones do not score very highly, in the same way that gulls do not have the same status as ducks in the eyes of birdwatchers. The white ones trouble me vaguely because of their association with damage to cabbages, but we don't have any cabbages.
The butterflies like the lavender in the front garden, and the buddleia in the back, as do the bumblebees. The act of sticking a bumblebee identification chart on my kitchen cupboard door has not been enough to make me any better at identifying bumblebees, either, but I'm glad to see them. As well as lavender and buddleia, they are very partial to agapanthus, and a rogue oregano which seeded itself among the asters in the back garden was thick with them. The pink oregano flowers are intrinsically pretty, quite apart from their wildlife value, and given the plant seems to co-exist happily with the asters and flowers before they do, I think I might deliberately add some more.
Wasps have started coming into the house, though they have not been aggressive. As their breeding season comes to an end, their thoughts turn to sweet stuff, a last taste of the good life before they die. Most will die come the autumn, only the queens will survive the winter. There is a wasp nest under one of the shrubs in the long bed, right by where I want to plant out a couple of shrubs and an iris. It will die out by itself, given a few more weeks, but I do really need to get on with the work. One of the shrubs I want to plant is viciously prickly, and keeps falling over in its pot at every breath of wind, and I'm getting fed up with picking it up again. Yesterday it fell on a blameless Darmera peltata and broke one of its leaves off. I put on my protective bee clothing and sprayed wasp nest killer down the hole. Poor wasps. If only they didn't sting and just fluttered around like the butterflies they would be safe.
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