It was lovely to go away last week but even lovelier to return – I always find that to be the case.

Before we went away, the green woodpecker eggs had hatched in the wood and the young chicks were making a right old noise. We were enjoying views of the young birds sticking their heads out of the hole and could see that there were at least two young in there:

The day after we got back from holiday, I went to the wood to meet up with a dormouse expert who was going to tour the boxes with me. She would hopefully then be prepared to be a second referee for my application for a dormouse disturbance license from Natural England. Before she arrived, I went round collecting the SD cards from the cameras and found that all was now quiet at the woodpecker nest.

When I looked at the photos, I could see that the chicks had got much bigger:

Then, on 15th June, one of the chicks emerged from the hole:

The parents continued to feed the chicks that were remaining in the tree:

It wasn’t until the next day that the second chick fledged:

But it seems that there was a third chick in the nest as well, which the adult birds went on feeding:

This final chick finally left the tree the following day and there were then no further green woodpecker visits:

I read that the clutch size for green woodpeckers is 4-6 eggs so there could well be unhatched eggs or dead chicks remaining within the nest, but I think that three successful fledgings is a very good result and hope to now see these chicks on other cameras around the wood.

I didn’t take a camera with me on the tour round the dormouse boxes, but I did take a few photos on my phone. This nest is interesting because it has a woven grass core and a few added hazel leaves constructed on top of an old mossy bird nest. We suspected that this is a dormouse nest, albeit an unusual one, but no one was home. It will be interesting to see if anyone is in there next month:

I am not sure if this is an old bee, wasp or hornet nest in box 40:

Box 45 had a dead dormouse in it unfortunately. In attendance was this beautiful sexton beetle:

The sexton beetle was never going to be able to bury this dormouse since it was not on the ground and, anyway, we had to evict the beetle because we needed to send the corpse off for a post mortem. Such is the terrible recent decline in the UK hazel dormouse population that any information on their well being is potentially of use.

As I walked to the post office in the village to send the parcel, I came across this man cutting a hedge. He tells me that this contraption, which spreads the weight of the hedge trimmer away from just the arms and shoulders, is a game changer. We have a lot of hedges to cut ourselves which I find very challenging for my arms, so this was of interest to me. It looked absolutely hilarious though:

ZSL will get back to me in due course with the results of the post mortem, so we shall wait to see what went on there in box 45. In the meantime, I do now have two referees to support my application for a dormouse disturbance licence and I’ve submitted it this week. It has been a long journey – I have needed to attend two day courses at the Wildwood Trust and am now into my third year of monthly tours (April to November) around our fifty nest boxes under the kind and watchful eye of my volunteer trainer, to whom I am very much indebted.

Other photos from the wood:

The other nest that we were watching before we went on holiday was back at the meadows, in the swift box attached to the house. Before we left, a second egg had been laid:

Then egg incubation commenced. Both parents took it in turns to sit on the eggs whilst the other went out to feed. But both birds were safely back in the box by the time darkness finally fell each night:

Incubation started after the second egg was laid on 29th May so I knew that the eggs would be hatching on 17th-19th June while we were away. I plugged my computer into the camera on our return on the 21st and saw that there was definitely a chick in there with them. It was being constantly incubated by a parent though and I only got the most fleeting of glimpses. It wasn’t until 23rd June that I got a proper view:

For the first time, on 26th June, I saw the nest without an adult on it and realised that there were in fact two chicks, now starting to get feathers, but that one was bigger than the other:

Elsewhere in the meadows, I suspect that we might have lost one of the badgers cubs whilst we are away because I have only been seeing a maximum of two in photos since we’ve returned. Mortality in badger cubs is very high – sadly only one in three cubs survives to be a year old.

I am enjoying seeing newly-fledged birds around the meadows:

Sparrowhawk are always on the look out for naive young birds, which make easy prey for them:

And it’s nice to see the buzzard back in the meadows again:

I saw a new species of fly down at the pond this week – the semaphore fly, Poecilobothrus nobilitatus. The ring of flies at the water’s edge here are the females. The larger males, with white tips to their wings, are standing off to the sides. They were signalling to the females by flicking their wings and doing little courtship dances to try to impress them.

The ponds are also busy with damselflies and dragonflies:

This emperor dragonfly was repeatedly returning to this same spot to lay her eggs. It was really fascinating to see that there was newt positioned in the water below her, presumably trying to eat the eggs as they were laid:

The newt was there for a long time until a wallowing dog disturbed it. After all, it’s been hot and she’s got a black fur coat on:

A few other interesting invertebrates in the meadows this month:

I finish this week with a photo from our conservatory:

I have never seen this before – the hunter has become the hunted. A large house spider has been caught and wrapped up by another spider and was left dangling from the windowsill. I have to admit to being not very keen on spiders and I did find this rather all rather disturbing.

My parents always loved Austria and I spent many childhood holidays there, now giving me a great nostalgic affection for the place. The romantic film The Sound of Music, released in 1965, with Julie Andrews singing in glorious Alpine meadows covered in flowers, probably played its part too.

Those long ago holidays with my parents and siblings had been all about walking or skiing, but these days Dave and I want our holidays to include a hefty dose of nature spotting. Last week I returned to the Austrian Alps on a Naturetrek group holiday based in Ehrwald on the Austrian/German border.

The three small Austrian villages of Ehrwald, Biberwier and Lermoos sit in a grassy arena surrounded by high rocky peaks. In the winter this is a skiing area but many of the lifts do still run in the summer, allowing access up onto the high slopes for those of us wanting to admire the scenery and skip through the flower meadows without the snow.

While the rest of the group flew into Innsbruck or Munich, we started our journey the day before and caught the Eurostar to Paris and then a train across to Munich, spending the night there with the tartan army – thousands of Scottish football fans – who were in Munich ahead of the Scotland versus Germany match, the first game of Euro 24.

The next day we met up with other members of the Naturetrek group at Munich airport and travelled south-west by minibus, crossing over into Austria and arriving at Ehrwald, very close to the border.

We had a fabulous week there, staying in a really nice hotel and with a group of lovely and interesting people. After dinner on the first night we went to see a beaver lodge, right by the sports pitch in Ehrwald:

The beavers knew we were close by but this didn’t overly put them off:

We visited on a second evening later in the week and again had some amazing views:

I don’t think I’ll ever again get such good sightings of wild beavers

The squirrels in Austria are black, being a melanistic morph of the Eurasian red squirrel rather than a different species:

It’s always exciting to see chamois. We did stumble upon three close up when we were on one of our walks but I didn’t get a photo. Other than that, we had to content ourselves with very distant views:

We also saw some birds. I had never before seen a black woodpecker:

There were a lot of butterflies flitting around the flower meadows and luckily both of our two nature guides were good at butterflies. Here we have heath fritillary, grizzled skipper, alpine blue and chequered skipper:

But the best butterfly spot was a little group of swallowtails that we saw on the last day:

I am forever on the look out for invertebrates, and some that I saw were pretty wacky:

The Alpine meadows were filled with such a diversity of plants, the like of which we just don’t see in the UK:

Orchids were everywhere. The top plant spot were the several clumps of lady’s slipper orchids growing by a stream:

These diminutive snowbells were also very memorable. They grow at high altitudes, coming into flower just as they are uncovered by the melting snow, before other, more vigorous plants can get going and shade them out:

On the best-weather-day of the week, we took a cable car up to a height of nearly 3,000m to the top of Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany.

Back down in the valley, the three villages have churches with onion domes:

We had a really good week and saw so much stuff, most of which we either wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have been able to identify if it wasn’t for our two excellent Naturetrek guides. We were sorry to leave the lovely Hotel Alpen Residence, although it fed us far too much food.

As we made our way back home by train, we again had some spare time in Munich. We decided to visit Dachau concentration camp, just outside the city and now a hard-hitting museum and memorial site. There is no attempt there to gloss over or trivialise anything, in the hope that the horrors that happened will never be forgotten or repeated.

I’m not going to say anything more about Dachau other than that it was a deeply, deeply disturbing experience and my mind is still processing what I learnt. That afternoon in Munich is one that I will always remember.

East Kent in June is a great place to explore if you want to see orchids. This week we went out and managed to see eleven species of them, as well as lots of other interesting things along the way. Park Gate Down is a beautiful reserve and is one of only three sites in the UK where the monkey orchid can be found:

There were many other lovely orchids to be seen there too, such as greater butterfly orchids:

Plenty of lady orchids, with the ladies wearing their spotty dresses and purple bonnets:

And some fly orchids:

We visited Bonsai Bank as well, also famed for its orchids, and in both reserves there were so many that you had to be careful where you trod:

There was a very vibrant display of southern marsh orchids at Restharrow scrape at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory:

And the weird but wonderful lizard orchids were out by the beach at Sandwich Bay:

As well as the orchids pictured above, we saw common twayblade, common spotted, early purple, broad leaved helleborine and pyramidal – a pleasing haul of eleven species. When we were out and about we spotted this female black-tailed skimmer dragonfly:

A hairy shield bug, which really doesn’t seem hairy enough to have been given that name:

And mating wasp beetles. The male on top is noticeably smaller than the female below him:

We were accompanied on our orchid quest by some visitors, one of whom is very interested in hoverflies. We saw two hoverflies of note to keep him happy – this magnificent hoverfly, Volucella bombylans, is doing a very good job of looking like a buff-tailed bumblebee. The female hoverfly will lay her eggs in a bumblebee nest, which then hatch into larvae that live off the detritus at the bottom of the bee nest:

This second hoverfly is Chrysotoxum bicinctum. This fly is a wasp mimic and it is suggested that its larvae live in ants nests feeding on root aphids that are being farmed by the ants for their honeydew:

We also had a stroll round Deal with our visitors. A grey seal was hauled up on the beach by the pier and was attracting a lot of admirers:

I am very biased but I think that Deal is a most attractive and friendly town. There is a shack at the end of the pier selling coffee and cakes and you can sit and admire the view back:

An interesting time ball tower stands on the seafront. The ball on the tower used to drop every day at 1pm so that, in days past, ships anchored offshore could ensure that their clocks were accurate – essential when navigating by the stars

I have been meaning to take a photo of the fresh fish stall on Deal beach for ages. It was skate Thursday at the time:

A crocheted tank on top of a post box marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day:

Back at the meadows, the neighbouring farmers field is growing wildflowers this year and is looking rather fabulous at the moment:

Our four new chalk banks in the meadows are also doing very well:

We have been spotted them being used by a variety of pollinators:

Now that it is June, it is not getting dark until late and the badgers are having to emerge and go about their business whilst it is still light:

The three cubs, however, are only being allowed out when it is properly dark:

The cubs are very sweet:

Although bullfinch nest in the wood each summer, it is very unusual to see one in the meadows:

The magpies have fledged three chicks who seem to be running their parents ragged:

I like this photo of an adult magpie taking a contemplative moment against a dramatic sky:

Several starling broods have also fledged and already seem to be behaving like rebellious teenagers:

The swifts laid a second egg in the nest box….

…and incubation started on 29th May. Egg incubation is quite boring, both for the bird probably and any human spectator:

Apparently both adults are taking it in turns to sit on the eggs but, at about 9.30pm when the day is just tipping over into complete darkness, the final bird out returns to the box and they both spend the night together:

In the wood, the green woodpecker chicks have hatched:

Sometimes they are already pushing themselves out quite a long way:

And there are at least two chicks:

It was the 80th anniversary of D-Day on Thursday 6th June and we attended a small but very moving gathering down on the beach by Deal Castle:

We sang one of my favourite hymns about those in peril on the sea and the bugler played the last post.

Then a small beacon was lit on the beach:

It was a very simple but poignant tribute to all those who lost their lives that day so that we could live our lives of freedom.

This week we returned once more to the wonderful Elmley Nature Reserve to spend another night in one of their shepherd huts.

Elmley is a 3,300 acre privately-owned National Nature Reserve and SSSI. The habitat is being managed specifically with breeding lapwing and redshank in mind, although these conditions also favour many other species. Predators such as foxes and stoats are controlled to give a helping hand to ground nesting birds, although they do still have to contend with aerial predators such as corvids and the twelve pairs of marsh harriers that now nest there.

The running of the reserve is funded by sensitive eco tourism – Kingshill farmhouse itself can be rented as a whole and there are also several shepherds huts and glamping tents to stay in on the reserve. It is a very popular wedding venue and there is a wedding booked there every weekend from now until mid October. I’m not at all surprised, it’s a special place indeed.

As creatures of habit, we stayed once more in the Saltbox shepherds hut with its super comfortable king sized bed and a fabulous view out over the marsh:

There are around 350 pairs of breeding lapwing on the reserve..

..and over 400 pairs of redshank..

We also saw a lot of yellow wagtails this time:

And an awful lot of starlings:

This looks like it could be a starling that a marsh harrier is taking here, although it was a pair of lapwing who were valiantly doing what they could to stop it:

Lapwings also view grey herons with extreme suspicion:

We took a walk down to the bird hides. On the way there, we saw this salsify plant which was a new one for us:

The most obvious flowering plant at this moment in time is hemlock:

In fact, there was so much hemlock, it looks like it might have become a bit of a problem:

There were numerous pairs of breeding avocet in front of the Wellmarsh hide, although no young yet as far as we could see:

We don’t often see avocets, certainly not up this close, and hadn’t noticed before that they have distinctly blue legs:

Many pairs of common tern were also nesting on the islands..

But it was only the black-headed gulls that appeared to have chicks in their nests so far:

A pair of shelduck, though, who will have nested in a hole somewhere such as in an old rabbit burrow, had already led their young down to the water. We counted twelve chicks in all.

Swifts were swooping through the skies all over the reserve. Always a bit difficult to photograph though:

Bitterns were booming around us on the way back from the hides – something we had never heard before but had always wanted to. I had ticked something off my bucket list.

Once back at the car park, swallows were collecting mud and sticks for their nests there…

And the car park was also providing house sparrows with an opportunity for long and luxurious dust baths:

The short eared owls that roost up near the car park in winter are long gone by May, but the nearby enclosure where curlew chicks are being head-started is now in its second year:

Having walked down to the nearest hides and returned to the car park, we then set off in another direction, along the path I have marked in green, that goes past the ruined school house and down to the marshes where over a hundred marsh harriers sometimes roost over the winter:

There is a little owl nest box attached behind the old school house and we always see a little owl here. We weren’t disappointed this time either:

The owl was difficult to spot in amongst the brickwork:

The weather was dull and these photos weren’t as pleasing as last May when the sun was out:

We walked down the path as far as the Swale, where we saw cattle egret amongst the cows:

And there was a group of goldfinch eating seeds:

We explored the abandoned wharf that would have been in used in Victorian times when there was an old brick works here on Sheppey:

As we returned to the farm from this second excursion, ominous clouds were gathering and we weren’t quite quick enough to get back to our shepherds hut before torrential rain was hurled at us from the skies:

The next morning dawned grey and windy with unpleasant rain showers gusting through.

We decided to pack up and head for home rather than spending additional time on the reserve. Breakfast is delivered to the huts and, as we ate ours reclining on our bed, we spotted a historic Thames sailing barge, the Repertor, motoring up the Swale, the tidal channel that divides the Isle of Sheppey from mainland Kent:

There is a two mile track between the road and Kingshill Farm at Elmley and you are asked to stay in your car and drive very slowly, treating it as a wildlife safari as you go. We did indeed see many wonders along the track, although, despite our best efforts, we failed to spot the bittern which was apparently up close to the road close by gate 2. Many of the photos I took on this track are already included above but there was also a palatial mute swan nest:

A colour-ringed lapwing, the sighting of which I have now reported to the relevant place:

And this very wet hare, giving itself a groom after the rain:

As usual, and despite the weather, we had had an absolutely fantastic time at Elmley and are definitely planning to return again soon.

If you would like to read more about the things we have seen at Elmley on previous trips, our visit in January this year is covered here: https://walmermeadows.co.uk/2024/01/14/elmley-in-winter/

And our stay in May last year is here : https://walmermeadows.co.uk/2023/05/19/a-return-to-elmley/

I want to finish today with the terrible news of the Gallant. She was launched in 1916 and served as a herring lugger in the North Sea until 1936. In recent times she was refurbished and acted as a training ship for young people as well as a wind-powered cargo ship, delivering produce to Europe in a carbon-free way across from the Caribbean. We saw her sailing past the meadows in October 2019 as she sailed into Deal bring pre-ordered produce to the people of the town:

In July 2020, she dropped anchor alongside the meadows and spent the night here, treating us to some lovely views:

But I’m really sorry to report that the Gallant sank on 21st May after capsizing in a sudden and violent storm in the Bahamas. The ship had departed from Columbia, heading to Europe carrying a cargo of coffee, cocoa and cane sugar. Eight sailors were on board and six were saved from a life raft by rescue services. But, after an extensive and exhaustive search, covering 3,700 square miles with planes, helicopters and ships, the two remaining female crew members couldn’t be found and have now been confirmed lost at sea. What a terrible, sad end to a lovely ship and a worthy endeavour.