The Green Cellar Slug – Limacus maculatus
We don’t talk about slugs very much, no one does really. Indeed if you find yourself involved in a coversation about them it’s usually either because someone is trying to kill them or one has left a slimey trail across your new garden furniture (it’ll wash off!). So it is nice to add another species of slug to the Garden species list by saying hello to the Green Cellar Slug. Isn’t he fabulous!
In a dark and damp corner of the Garden we had stored, for some considerable time, an unassembled and still boxed wooden planter. We just never found a use for it. Well yesterday we decided to peel off the rotting cardboard and put the thing together and found this fabulous individual hiding inside.
It’s one of two similar species, the other being the Yellow Cellar Slug, which we are yet to record in the Garden. The Yellow Cellar Slug or Limacus flavus, a species long recorded in the UK, is believed to be dropping in abundance. Possibly being replaced by the much more recently noted species L. maculatus. It may even be the two species are hybridizing. There seems to have been in recent years a campaign to discover what the true picture is regarding the fate of the Yellow Cellar Slug, but we couldn’t find the results of the study.
In any case, the Green Cellar Slug has been growing in distribution and like the Yellow is frequently found in gardens where it feeds on the usual variety of rotting vegetation, fungus and yes, the odd growing seedling. Although we have yet to see one feed ourselves.
The Jackdaw – Coloeus monedula
Every so often we see a familar species and think something like, “Good morning Mr *enter species here*, how are you today?” (it’s nearly always a Mr, don’t know why) and then it suddenly dawns that we’ve never added this species to our Garden list. That seems to have been the case for the Jackdaw, which we spotted on the garden fence this morning (5th May) whilst cutting back some ivy.
Adding the Jackdaw now means that of the five corvid species we regularly see in the surrounding area, we have three recorded in the Garden. The other two being Carrion Crow and Magpie. The two local species not recorded yet are Rook, which we have never seen land in the Garden and Jay which we think we may have but cannot be sure.
So there you have it! Two species new to the Garden species list, but who have almost certainly been here all along as either a resident, which the Green Cellar Slug is most likely, or a visitor in the case of the Jackdaw. Garden wildlife can be so abundant that we take many species for granted, we are lucky this is the case. It may not always be.
DC: 05.05.2024
Wildlife Garden 