Spring has arrived in Gloucestershire and with it some lovely, sunny days on the wall. We’ve recently been building dry stone walls in and around Tetbury and have had some good encounters this month with a range of wall-dwellers and passers-by. We were halfway through taking down a wall one morning when there was a rustling beneath the leaves and a little amber eye opened to give us a cold stare for disturbing the peace. The toad (Bufo bufo) had found a nice little nook between the stones, so we were careful to place down it in a new spot where it could find its way back into the wall.
The toad was a solitary figure, but on another job also in Tetbury we found a number of muslin footman (Nudaria mundana) larvae, which feed on the lichen of dry stone walls. They were feeding on the exposed coping stones of this particular wall.
We also spotted a queen wasp exploring the crevices of a wall one particularly balmy day on a job in Stroud. April is the time when queen wasps start to emerge from hibernation as the days get warmer, so seeing her was a nice sign of spring. She was likely looking for a place to start building her nest.
And finally, a white or brown lipped snail (Cepaea hortensis or Cepaea nemoralis) managed to get onto one of our stones and had to be relocated before it found itself somewhere between a rock and a hard place!
