By Helen Bovill
April has been a very sunny month. I can only recall four days when the sun didn’t shine at all. There was hardly any rain. Most of that rain took the form of very light showers on a few days, with the only heavy rain falling early in the month as part of Storm Dave. It has also been very mild, and I can only recall a very light frost on one morning.
Insects
I saw my first Orange-Tip butterfly of the year at the start of the month. Pictured above, this is the male. I didn’t see a female until much later in the month. I finally saw a female Brimstone, over a month after I saw the first male one back in February. I also saw my first Speckled Wood, Green-veined White, Small White, Large White and Holly Blue butterflies this month, making a total of 10 different species this year so far. By the end of the month there were lots of Holly Blues fluttering high up in the trees. It seems to be a much better year for them than last year.
Orange-Tip (female)
Brimstone (female)
Green-Veined Whites
Speckled Wood nectaring on Spotted Laurel in the Quaker Burial Ground
Small White (male)
Large White (male)
Holly Blue
The sunny weather helped the flowers to bloom, attracting many different types of bees including Tawny Mining and Common Carder. The hoverfly I saw most often this month was the Common Flower Fly, and I saw a Batman hoverfly later in the month.
I saw ladybirds everywhere again. Earlier in the year it was just the native 7-Spot ones I was seeing, but this month I saw Harlequin ones as well.
Tawny Mining Bee
Common Carder Bee
Batman Hoverfly
7-Spot Ladybirds
Plants
There has been such a growth spurt this month that there are too many different plants to mention individually! Some of the less abundant ones I found in flower were Petty Spurge, Three-cornered Garlic, Yellow Archangel and Quince. I also found some Annual Honesty, which I’d never seen before.
Petty Spurge
Three-Cornered Garlic
Yellow Archangel
Quince
Annual Honesty
But the main stars of the cemetery flower show this month were of course the bluebells. The ones here are the Spanish ones, creating carpets of blue everywhere you look. I also found some white and pink ones. I don’t believe we have any of our native bluebells in the cemetery – I’ve certainly never seen any.
Birds
I only saw our regular birds this month. They were very active, with many singing loudly in the mornings, starting to form pairs and gathering nest material. There was no sign of the pair of Greenfinches I saw last month. I heard Chiffchaffs singing loudly all over the cemetery every day this month.
The only unusual bird I found was a dead budgie. Obviously an escaped domestic bird, it didn’t show any signs of violence and had a numbered metal ring around one of its legs. It’s hard to say how it got there or how it came to its demise. I submitted a photo of it to iNaturalist to confirm what it was.
Robin with food
Song Thrush on Chinese Barberry
Carrion Crow
Fungi
The lack of rain meant that a lot of the fungi had just dried up and was difficult to find. I did rediscover the King Alfred’s Cakes I originally found in December, and this species, having a hard casing, meant it looked just the same as it did four months ago. I did manage to find a species I’d never seen in the cemetery before, a Home Cup, which was actually growing on some fly-tipped bedding in a shady spot.
King Alfred's Cakes
Home Cup
Conclusion
April has been very dry, sunny and often warmer than usual. The last weekend of the month was perfect for going outdoors and observing nature in all its forms. I mentioned iNaturalist earlier - this is a huge database of observations of wildlife submitted by members all around the world. Within the database are various projects and the City Nature Challenge is one of them. It ran for four days over the last weekend of April, and Hull was one of the cities taking place. Hull always does well within the UK part of the challenge, with the overall number of observations and the number of different species found often being far greater than those in cities covering much larger geographical areas.
It's very useful to have a snapshot of the wildlife that can be found within the city boundary, because I can then look at what’s been seen in the cemetery and see how it compares with the city as a whole. But not all the project’s observations have been added to the database yet, so I’ll say more about this next month.
In the meantime, now is the perfect time of the year for a stroll in the cemetery. The paths are dry and easy to walk on, and the bluebells look stunning. Or why not sit on the Larkin bench and enjoy listening to the birds singing? It’s lovely spot for catching some afternoon sunshine!
Squirrel in the mist. See you next month!
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