Above picture: A sparrowhawk breakfasting on the lawn.
Things I didn’t include
- Barn owl – the photo I used as an icon for my blog was taken in January 2023, when it was a regular visitor at dusk that winter. We haven’t spotted it since.
- Earwig – spotted 16 July 2023. I didn’t count it because I wasn’t happy with the photo. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with the photo.
- Greater spotted woodpecker – spotted 28 July – turned his head away as I took the photo.
- Bat – spotted throughout the summer. I finally got a photo with a couple of bats in it on 9 September, but the bats were just blurry smudges, and I wouldn’t have been able to identify the species.
- Tiny slug – photographed on 23 September – but I couldn’t find any information on it.
- Green woodpecker – spotted 1 October. I thought I would get a better photo, but I didn’t.
- Hart’s tongue fern and tree ferns – I could have included these, as although we planted them, they are commonly found growing wild in Cornwall.
- Black redstart – spotted 23 October on the balcony railing so it couldn’t be counted.
- Weasel – Mr C spotted it on 26 October, but it got away.
- Unarmed stick-insect – spotted 27 January 2024 – but I couldn’t count it because it was in the front garden.
- Water plantain, wandering pond snail and fool’s watercress – all spotted in May 2024 – photographed but I wasn’t confident in my identification.
- Horse flies – very common, especially down by the stream. They are too fast to photograph, but I could have snapped a bite, as evidence. I didn’t think of that!
- Plus grasses, plants and sedges that remain unidentified.
Other Visitors … Past
There were some species, like the barn owl, that visited in our first four years living here, but not during the year of my count. Or at least, if they did, we weren’t looking at the right time to see them.
- A roe deer spotted a handful of times in the early morning in April 2023.
- The coal tit, nuthatch, greenfinch, chaffinch and bullfinch. We spotted the bullfinch in next door’s willow just before the count started!.
- A snipe on the bank of the stream – 19 January 2022.
- A kingfisher – 8 February 2022.
- Pigmy shrews, along with the mice and voles, were regularly spotted in the undergrowth while we were gardening.
…and Present
Afterwards, during the rest of June, I spotted a bright red cinnabar moth flying across the watermeadow on the bank, and some scarlet pimpernel blooming on the ramp.