We had visitors last weekend and we all took a trip on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway which runs for 13.5 miles from Hythe in Kent down to Dungeness which is one of the largest expanses of shingle in Europe.

During the Second World War, the railway was requisitioned by the War Department who built the only miniature armoured train in the world to run on it. This train was used to carry supplies to construct PLUTO – pipeline under the ocean – which ran from Dungeness to Boulogne and helped fuel the Allied invasion force in France:

We all got off the train at Dungeness, the end of the line, but I felt a bit frustrated about only being there on foot along with everyone else on the train, with little to do other than to have lunch and then wait for a train back again. The station is close to Dungeness nuclear power station…

..and the iconic old lighthouse, operational between 1904 and 1960:

On our return journey, I was able to photograph Hythe sound mirror from the train shortly before arriving in Hythe:

Back home, we have been following the progress of two swift chicks being reared in a box attached to our house. As the chicks have grown, things have started to get quite crowded, especially with both adults in there as well overnight:

By 23rd July one of the chicks was flapping its wings all around the box in preparation for fledging:

I think this chick will fledge vey soon now. Their rate of growth has been so fast – here is a comparison between July 3rd and July 23rd:

Both chicks peeping out at the big, wide world that they will soon be a part of:

For this last stage of their development, perhaps the chicks are being well fed with the bulky flying ants which are now dispersing up into the air from the hundreds of ant nests spread across the meadows:

It has turned out to be a jolly good July for six-spot burnet moths:

As the photo above shows, we used to see narrow-bordered five-spot burnet moths as well, although sadly I haven’t spotted one here since 2022. I am now chasing and trying to photograph every burnet moth I come across in the hope that it turns out to be a narrow-bordered five-spot – I would love for them to still be here.

My potting shed is less than a year old but is already laced with sticky spider webs. This large and magnificent oak eggar moth was hopelessly entangled one morning but was still alive so I managed to successfully rescue it. I have now cleared all webs away with a broom and will continue to do this as the summer progresses.

Marbled white butterflies are still flying in the meadows:

I like the shading on the wings of this hoverfly:

This is an emperor dragonfly exuvia – the empty shell of a dragonfly larva now that the adult has emerged from it and taken to the air:

And here is an adult emperor dragonfly, sticking her eggs onto vegetation in the pond, beginning the emperor lifecycle once more:

The breeding season is drawing to a close for many of the birds in the meadow. Young crows are still begging for food from their parents though:

The adult magpies have finished raising their chicks and now beginning their annual moult:

This robin is spreading its wings out in the sunshine which is thought to both help spread preen oil over its feathers and drive parasites out:

I can’t see a ring on this female kestrel so this might be a second bird hunting in the meadows:

We hadn’t seen a plant like this before and couldn’t find it in any of our reference books:

There were tiny single flowers sticking up from the whorl:

We are very fortunate in having the plant recorder for East Kent living round the corner and she came to have a look at this strange plant of ours. It turns out that it is in fact a ribwort plantain, Plantago lanceolata, but one that has had a genetic mutation, causing it to grow in a completely different way. The word for strange plant growths like this is fasciation.

This is a much more familiar way for a ribwort plantain to grow:

In the wood, a lot of the sycamore trees have pale mottling all over their leaves this year:

This mottling is caused by the tiny sycamore-specialist leafhopper, Eurhadina Ioewii, and several adults were still to be seen on the undersides of the affected leaves:

And some of the larvae as well:

These leafhoppers are obviously having a bumper year because we have not seen the sycamores looking like this before.

This hogweed has been very prettily decorated by the leaf-mining larvae of the fly Phytomyza spondylii or Phytomyza pastinacae. The larvae live within the leaf tissue and move around as they eat the leaf cells, creating these white lines:

The hotter weather has been bringing some interesting birds down to the ponds in the wood:

My final photo for today is of the evening concert and picnic that we also went to with our visitors last weekend:

This event is part of Canterbury Festival and is held every year in the gardens of Barham Court. As we ate our picnic and danced to the music, we could admire the parties of swifts as they circled the green copper church spire to the left of the house. Now approaching the end of July, every sighting of a swift is precious because it might turn out to be the last one we have until next May.