The Other Side of our Hedge

We wandered down to our hedge this morning to see what was on the other side. We took our house guest Louis, who needed a bit of exercise with the tennis ball before letting us survey the area! It was a bit of a juggling act with the dog on the lead, taking notes and photos (the camera ran out of battery) and for some reason the area was particularly busy with cars and cyclists etc today.

We recorded the bird song in the hedge which was difficult to hear over said traffic but then it didn't matter because I cleverly deleted it when trying to play it back!

Today's view of the hedge from the road side.

The view from the other side. We spotted the addition of oak and more bramble this side.

Our observations, a few of which are in photos before the camera died.

Lots more roses on the dog rose bushes.

Big clumps of seeds on the ash trees.

We're thinking one of the unidentified plants is blackthorn. This photo shows a fly (not very clear).

The spindle had more sprays of white flower.

A bee pollinating the spindle flowers.

We took a large white tray to inspect some insects and gently shook each different species of shrub. Lots of aphids in varying colours landed and jumpted about in the tray including this little fellow, but we forgot to record the shrub it came from.

But the spiders definitely seem to like the dog rose as 2 landed in the tray from that.

Our other observations were:-

1.  Maybe our hedge is too deep to actually be a hedge! There were a couple of areas you could walk through and it's possibly deeper than 5m which we read is one of the factors that classifies a hedge.

2.  In the middle of "our hedge" are a few coppiced hazel trees.

3.  The horse chestnut is very young and only stands at about 3m tall.

4.  There are young green berries appearing in the holly (camera had died by this point).