By Helen Bovill
The first month of summer started with some dull, rainy days but it was never very cold and the showers weren’t prolonged or heavy. It was very warm, with lots of sunshine and a mini heatwave towards the end of the month, where temperatures reached as high as 32℃ - well above the average for early summer.
Birds
I saw quite a few fledglings this month, and in particular Robins, Great Tits and Blue Tits (above). The Chiffchaffs were still calling and although I only saw the cemetery regulars, one morning I heard a Jackdaw. I can’t say for definite if it was in the cemetery or just outside it, but I do occasionally see them on Princes Avenue, and yesterday morning I saw one in Pearson Park. I’ll keep looking, as it’s always good to find a new species in the cemetery.
Plants
As is typical at this time of year, some of the cemetery vegetation is now looking a little tired, with all the bluebells, wild garlic, cow parsley and most of the hogweed having now died back. It’s good that we have so much evergreen growth to balance this out though, and all the trees now have all their leaves on. This makes the smaller birds a lot harder to see and photograph though!
I found plenty of plants in flower. On one day in the middle of the month I had a walk around the cemetery and photographed all the plants I found in flower. Here are just 16 of them -
Top left - Water Figwort; right - Hedge Woundwort
Bottom left- Trailing Bellflower; right - Germander Speedwell
Top left - White Campion; right - Red Campion
Bottom left - Herb Robert; right - White Clover
Top left - Red Valerian; right - Knapweed
Bottom left - Common Mallow; right - Musk Mallow
Top left - Tansy; right - Ragwort (both with visiting Thick-legged Flower Beetles)
Bottom left - Buttercup; right - Wood Avens
The privet growing in the cemetery – some of it self-seeded in random places and some planted as a hedge – is in flower and actually smells very pleasant. And later in the month I found some Toadflax in flower on the verge alongside the cemetery.
Privet
Toadflax
Insects
I didn’t see many butterflies this month – just Red Admiral and Speckled Wood in the first half of the month and Green-veined White, Small White and a Comma in the second half. It was a quiet month for butterflies, but I noticed that the ones that did appear, especially at the end of the month, were flying inside the cemetery rather than along the verge. It looks like they were attracted to the lower temperature inside the cemetery.
I saw plenty of Thick-legged Flower Beetles, also known as Swollen-Thighed Flower Beetles, on many of the flowers as can be seen from the Tansy and Ragwort photos above. I also saw a few different species of bees, hoverflies and other small insects, including a Yellow-barred Longhorn moth, the first time I’d ever seen one in the cemetery. I’ve never found many moths in the cemetery, despite the fact that the UK has more species of day-flying moths than butterflies. I also managed to identify some tiny insects I often find on the flowers as Varied Carpet beetles.
Green-veined White
Batman Hoverfly
Yellow-barred Longhorn Moth
Varied Carpet Beetles
Fungi
The weather wasn’t ideal for fungi, and I only found one type this month – a rather battered Dryad’s Saddle.
Conclusion
June has been a hot one, with the shade of the cemetery giving some welcome relief from the sun – on hot days at this time of the year it’s always a few degrees cooler inside the cemetery than outside on the footpaths adjoining it. And as all the footpaths inside the cemetery are dry at the moment the conditions are perfect for a leisurely walk to appreciate everything this lovely place has to offer.
Squirrel of the month, snoozing in the sun. See you next month!
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