Two extraordinary things happened on Thursday. Firstly, there was a photo of a juvenile cuckoo on one of the trail cameras:

However, this year’s cuckoo stayed around here for two or three days and has now been pictured on every perch that we have. Here are a few of the photos:

But the bird has now gone on its way, heading off over the Channel and further on south to Africa. By the time it returns next spring, it will be in its adult plumage which is distinctly less spotty and with a grey head, as seen in this photo from Wiki Commons:

The second surprising thing that happened on Thursday is that The King landed in the field next to the meadows to pay a visit to Walmer and Deal.

He visited Walmer Castle, the Walmer RNLI, helped with a beach clean and a few other things as well over the course of the day:

He then returned to his helicopter, which flew low directly over the meadows as it departed:

All in all, it was a very memorable day.

Other things that have been going on in the meadows this week:

A tawny owl has been successfully hunting:

And a barn owl has been seen again after quite a long absence:

Several pairs of stock doves have bred in the meadows this summer…

…and it looks like they are planning on fitting in another brood as well:

Somewhere in the hedgerows, some woodpigeon eggs have hatched. The parent will fly away with the broken egg so as not to advertise where the nest is:

I was so pleased to see the ringed kestrel back in the meadows because she hasn’t been spotted for ages and I was worrying about her:

Magpies, on the other hand, are always very much in evidence:

Once we get to high summer and winged ants take to the skies, black-headed gulls start ‘anting’ in the meadows:

The single-parent family of swifts in the nest box attached to the house continue to do well. This photo was taken at 5am but already the parent bird had gone off to catch food:

One of the swiftlets peering out of the box:

Our new thermal imaging camera shows a lovely orange glow at the end of one of the smaller swift boxes, as evidence that a second pair of swifts are still roosting in there to claim it as their own:

One of the foxes here has presumably broken his leg because he has been unable to put any weight on it for many months. He is the most enthusiastic partaker of the nightly peanuts and has taken to coming quite close to the house at dusk to wait for me:

Here he is around the meadows hopping along on three legs:

This is a different fox but I love the photo:

I am once again getting bitten by Campyloneura virgula, a tiny predatory mirid bug:

Campyloneura virgula mainly eats small invertebrates such as aphids and mites, using its piercing mouthparts to extract fluids from its prey. Whilst they are known to bite humans, the reason for this behaviour is still unknown.

A Kite-tailed robberfly, Machimus atricapillus, in the meadows:

This was a new day-flying moth to be spotted here, Sitochroa palealis:

It seems to be a very good year for another day-flyer, the six-spot burnet moth:

There also seem to be many more hoverflies around this year than normal:

The grass snake is still hanging around the new pond in the wood:

And the recently-fledged green woodpeckers love this shallow pool:

A pair of stock doves have nested in the tawny owl box this summer. This is lovely, but obviously not as good as if tawnies nested:

Last weekend we stayed in a large old farmhouse in Wiltshire with our children and their partners to attend the wedding of our nephew and his new wife:

A bush cricket was on our daughter’s windscreen as they set off from Crouch Hill in London to make their way to Wiltshire. Over the course of the journey down the M4 it slowly worked itself back along the car until it was on the rear windscreen by the time they arrived at the farmhouse two or three hours later. I’m afraid that it is now going to have to make a new home for itself in Wiltshire. I wonder how much wildlife is transported around the country in this way?

The view out over the Marlborough Downs from the front door of the farmhouse was simply breath-taking:

We returned from the wedding at 9.15pm on Saturday just as dusk was gathering. But we were stopped in our tracks at the sight of hundreds of swifts filling the sky above the house as they fitted in one last feed before it got dark. We lay on our backs on the lawn in our wedding finery to watch the spectacle. Never have I even come close to seeing such a large group of swifts and it was a completely unforgettable wildlife moment at the end of a long, hot day.