While the meadow is being nurtured for native wildflowers, we must remember that one of the main reasons we are doing this is to ensure that the invertebrates are given a place to feed, breed and shelter. In order to support this, it was our intention to provide multiple microhabitats for invertebrates in and around the meadow.
In year one, we managed a lot. The meadow currently hosts:
And, next year, we will be adding another beetle box and a sand pit. read on to find out more about all of these.
The hoverfly lagoon is a repurposed water trough from the estate. We placed it on a bank in the meadow, close to the stream and filled it with water, rotting leaves and sticks. This allows hoverflies who use stagnant water in their lifestyle, to lay eggs in the trough.
Once the eggs hatch, the larvae swim around in the water and eat decaying organic matter. The unfortunately named Rat-tailed Maggot, the larvae of the Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax) is one such example. These larvae have long breathing tubes (the 'rat tail') which they use like a snorkel as they wander around feeding in the watery detritus.
A good friend of microWild, Cóilín Ó Tuathail, built this beautiful nesting box for solitary bees and wasps. It is south-facing and has a tile roof overhang to keep the cavities dry during the rainy season.
If you look carefully around the centre of the box you will notice one of the holes filled in with dry mud. This year, a lone female Osmia bicornis (Red Mason Bee) used the box. This is my experience with my own bee hotels. For the first year or two, you get only a few visitors and then the populations take off and it becomes really popular.
The box was also used as a hang-out and mating site for some Snipe Flies among others. At one stage, I even had to discourage a queen Tree Wasp (Dolichovespula sylvestris) from using the void in the box as a potential nest early on in the season.
The standing poles were repurposed from a tree which fell down in one of the late spring storms on the estate. They were already heavily bored by beetles and made perfect sites for many invertebrates to hang out and hopefully next year we might get a few bees or wasps nesting in there too. We attached the Cavity Nesting Box to one of the poles.
The Beetle Box is an attempt to simulate the inside of a rotting tree. It is filled with clay, wood chips and chicken poo which might attract saproxylic invertebrates, those who use decaying wood to complete their lifestyle. It was built by another good friend of microWild, Mark Madden.
It has an open bottom and is set deep into the ground and is finished off with a lid. The hole in the side simulates a rotting hole in the trunk of a tree and encourages saproxylic beetles etc. to come check out the wonderful egg-laying environment inside.
There are many soft traps layed around the meadow. Some of the most successful this year were old scaffolding planks which we placed around the edge. These proved invaluable by attracting woodlice, beetles, harvestmen, pseudoscorpions, centipedes, millipedes, mites, flies, spiders, and so much more. Pieces of old decaying wood also attracted a lot of invertebrates and were also used as a refuge by frogs and newts at times. We often lay cardboard down in certain areas too, as this is a magenet for certain invertebrates.
In 2025, we will add another beetle box to the meadow, and we have built a location for a sand pit. The site is very close to the lakeside here in Blessington and several sandy areas which hosting mining bees, solitary wasps and tiger beetles, all of which utilise sand as their nests. We hope to encourage them to visit and make microWild their home.