We have been away from here for three weeks and so it was nice to get this photo last night to reassure us that all was well with our little badger family:

And all before 9pm!

Additionally yesterday we found a dragonfly that had fallen into the pond. Once it was fished out, it needed to stay still in the sunshine to dry out its wings which gave us a good opportunity to get some photos of it to identify it by:

Dragonfly ID is quite complicated, but the blue lower half of the eyes and the yellow veins in the wings amongst other things are good indications that this is a Red Veined Darter which is a scarce Summer migrant to the UK. I posted the photos on a site called ispotnature which is run by the Open University and I did get positive confirmation that this is a female Red Veined Darter, which is exciting.

So we might have been away for three weeks during which we will have no doubt missed lots of stuff but now we are back up and ready for Nature Action, binoculars and cameras to hand! Looking forward to the coming Autumn – my favourite season in these meadows.