Although I’ve had trail cameras pointing at all sorts of different ponds for nearly a decade, I’d never seen a badger take a bath. I’d seen them drink but never had they got themselves wet, even on the hottest of nights. So I was very surprised to see one do so in the wood this week:

The heat this week has also brought some great birds down to the woodland ponds:

Occasionally polecats (or they might be polecat-ferret hybrids) are seen at the wood. Our visitor shown below appeared on several of the cameras this week although never very clearly. But I can see no hint of a facial mask this time and guess this to be a feral ferret rather than a polecat:

The marjoram is now out in flower in a large woodland glade in one section of the wood. It was very sunny when I was there but only a very few butterflies were visiting. This is a marked contrast to previous years – where have all the butterflies gone?

I did, however, see this dingy white plume moth, Merrifieldia baliodactylus, amongst the marjoram, which is fitting since marjoram is its larval food plant:

Over in the meadows, there are two sweet badger cubs:

I am really pleased to see that the cubs are still going around with their mother to be shown the ropes. In the drought summer of 2022, all three of our badger cubs perished and I still feel wobbly about a cub’s ability to get through their first summer. It is a very dry part of the country and difficult for them to dig for worms when the ground is hard.

Foxes would also like to have some of the peanuts but the badgers are the top dogs and the foxes have to wait their turn:

A female tawny owl has been hooting around the house in the evenings. This could be her appearing on the cameras:

And I’m pleased to say that a barn owl has also been seen:

The ringed female kestrel is hunting in the meadows every day at the moment:

She does particularly like the perch in the middle of the second meadow, but this one is also popular with the crows and magpies, so she needs to defend her position:

The corvids do always give way to her:

I have linked photos from two cameras here. The kestrel flies from the perch in the hedgerow….

…down to the small pond nearby for a drink and a bath….

… and returns wet and dishevelled to the perch:

Both a male sparrowhawk and this large, aggressive-looking female are also being seen on the perches and gates around the meadows:

Nice to briefly see a juvenile green woodpecker:

But definitely not nice to see this many magpies:

Over the years we have seen a wide range of things dangling from the beak of a magpie. I think this is a newt here unfortunately:

The magpie on the left has a grasshopper or cricket in its beak:

And this crow has raided a woodpigeon nest:

This blackbird is sticking to blackberries, but she’s taking a lot of them. I have many photos exactly like these:

A variety of birds have been making the most of the weather by sunbathing on a patch of bare earth. This will be significantly warmer than the grassland around it:

And it is also a favourite basking spot for a wall butterfly:

I had been concerned that the drought of 2022 had wiped out the population of narrow-bordered five spot burnet moths that we used to have in the meadows. I hadn’t seen any at all last year but I am delighted to report that some have finally been spotted:

And it has been a good year for southern hawker dragonflies down by the ponds and several have been seen laying eggs:

I came across this photo taken in early August 2016, which was the only year that a local farmer came to cut and bale the meadows for us:

It was a bit of a surprise to see the meadows looking so neat and ordered like this and it was only the beginning of August. I remember that both meadows were cut in their entirety that year, although many of the invertebrates would not have finished their lifecycles by then and it must have been devastating for them. These days we don’t start cutting until September and leave a third uncut on a rotational basis with invertebrates in mind.

I have tried to reproduce this 2016 photo with how the meadows look now, eight years on:

The majestic agapanthus at the entrance to the meadows is having an amazing summer this year:

Last year there were far fewer flowers:

But I can’t talk about the agapanthus without once more mentioning the drought summer of 2022 and showing this shocking photo:

August is far from my favourite month – I worry about the water levels in the ponds, how the badgers are feeding themselves and if it is time yet again to water all the pots. My thoughts are automatically turning to September, when it is time to start cutting the meadows and the bird migration will begin in earnest. The cuckoos and swifts have already mostly gone and I hear that willow warblers have started moving as well. Whilst I don’t want to wish time away, I am definitely looking forward now to September.

We spent last weekend in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds:

We had booked ourselves onto a Naturetrek day trip exploring the nature of the Painswick valley on the Saturday, and the plan was to make a weekend of it by doing other things in the area on Friday afternoon, and again on Sunday morning, before heading home.

In the event, the motorway system across the South of England on Friday was in complete crisis and, instead of taking us three and a half hours, the journey took us seven. We had set off from home at 10am and arrived, exhausted and in a ‘never again’ frame of mind, at 5pm. But our hotel was absolutely charming and soon worked its magic, helped by a glass of chilled, crisp white wine whilst relaxing in the gardens.

The next morning we met up with the other five people in our Naturetrek group along with a very knowledgeable guide. Over the course of the day we visited three nature reserves around Painswick looking at the invertebrates, plants and birds that were to be found there:

The photo below was taken in the meadows a few years ago. A wasp nest had been ripped open by a badger and, as I was trying to photograph the devastation, a Volucella zonaria flew in to check it out and see if she had an opportunity to lay her eggs.

This next invertebrate was the most exciting spot of the day for me. It is a Downland Villa bee-fly, Villa cingulata, and what a lovable dumpy shape it is. This fly was thought extinct in the UK, having not been spotted anywhere in the second half of the 20th century. However, it was rediscovered in The Cotswolds in 2000 and has been regularly seen ever since, mainly in The Cotswolds and The Chilterns. Unlike other bee-flies, the Villa bee-flies do not have a permanently extended proboscis and, although not much is currently known of its lifecycle, its hosts are thought to be noctuid moths rather than solitary bees

We had a really enjoyable day with a lovely group of people and we felt that it had been worth battling the horrors of the motorway system on a summer Friday.

After the field trip, we called in for a drink at a pub in the village of Minchinhampton before returning to the hotel.

On Sunday morning we visited the gardens of the Miserden Estate near Stroud, which has been in the Wills family since 1913.

A sculpture exhibition is being held in the gardens this summer:

The gardens were beautiful and we enjoyed looking for successful planting combinations as ideas for our own garden back in Kent:

I am generally not a fan of sycamore trees but this one is thought to be 250 years old and is pretty magnificent. It is growing out of a stone wall:

The motorways redeemed themselves slightly on the journey home on Sunday afternoon by not throwing any more horrible jams or diversions at us, but we have definitely resolved not to travel on a Friday again if we can help it.

Before we left for Gloucestershire, the two swift chicks in the box on the house had seemed ready to fledge:

But on our return, both swift chicks still remained in the box:

Our swift year has now come to a very satisfying end. It has been completely fascinating and we have learnt so much about them. Soon all four birds will be en route for Africa and we can only mentally wave them off and wish them every luck for their journey. I do so hope that we will see them all again next year.

My final photo for today is of the flat roof below the box, where there is a surprising amount of muck:

I presume that these are the faecal sacks produced by the chicks that the adults have carried out of the box and immediately dropped. But now that the birds have gone, this is the only outward sign that they were ever here at all and I am finding it a strangely pleasing sight.

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.

My sister’s eldest daughter got married last weekend and Dave and I stayed in a Airbnb near the wedding venue with her family and the bridal party

The Airbnb was on the edge of the rural Hampshire town of Whitchurch and was the former home of Lord Denning (1899-1999), who was the best known British judge of the 20th century:

His family continue to own the house and many mementoes of his life remain there. His study is lined with his law books, often adorned with his hand written notes in the margins:

There are photographs of the great man on the study mantlepiece:

And other photos on the walls – Lord Denning with Churchill here:

And, later, with Queen Elizabeth II:

Several chairs made for Royal occasions, such as the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969 and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, still remain in the house:

But the most wonderful thing of all about the house was that its lawns swept down to the crystal clear waters of the River Test, with a bridge across to a private island.

We were there for the wedding not for the wildlife, but it was such a wonderful place that of course we couldn’t resist:

The gravel bed of the river is used by brown trout to lay their eggs. We were delighted by how many of these beautiful fish we saw, quietly facing upstream waiting for invertebrates to be brought down to them by the current:

Peering over the bridge by the silk mill in Whitchurch, there must have been thirty large trout below us in the water. It was quite a sight:

I am particularly pleased with this photo:

A view of another section of the Test. Here work has been done to restore the river banks allowing the return of water vole and water rail:

An information board about the life cycle of the brown trout:

We have vowed to return to the River Test soon to spend some more time getting to know its wonders.

On the way home we called into Maidenhead in Berkshire to see two of our children. I also went round to the house of some friends who have some scarce and exciting bees visiting their garden at the moment. They are large scabious mining bees, Andrena hattorfiana, which are Britain’s largest mining bee.

There are records of this bee for East Kent and we do certainly have field scabious in the meadows:

However, I am yet to see this bee here. Apparently they only fly a maximum of 900m from their nest site so, if there isn’t a population in our immediate vicinity, then I suppose we won’t see one however much field scabious we grow. All the same, I think I will sow some additional field scabious seed this autumn just in case.

There may be no large scabious mining bees on our scabious but these sinister-looking flies also love this plant and I’m seeing a lot of them this year:

The meadows used to be alive with burnet moths in the high summer but for the last couple of years there have been very few. Possibly numbers have been terribly affected by the recent drought summers.

Now is the time of the year that we start pulling ragwort. However, if there are cinnabar moth caterpillars on the plant we leave it alone and return at a later date once the caterpillar has pupated:

It is unusual for kestrels to hunt here in high summer when their rodent prey is safely hidden amongst the tall grasses. But once the meadows start to be cut in September, they return to see what opportunities this might throw up for them. Back in September 2019 a young female kestrel was ringed here and she has continued to use these meadows to hunt ever since. This year she has turned up earlier than usual and is being seen on various cameras around the meadows:

The average lifespan of a wild kestrel in the UK is four years but this female is already over five years old. The longest lived wild Kestrel in the UK is recorded as fifteen years and eleven months.

Kestrels can use the UV spectrum of light to see the urine trails of small mammals and thus know where the most productive places to hunt are likely to be. We are keeping two large areas of the meadows cut short this year to check on our wild parsnip issue – I wonder if this is why this kestrel is back earlier than expected.

Since we returned from the wedding, parties of swifts have been screaming around the meadows on a regular basis – we have never seen so many swifts here other than when they are migrating south en masse. A group of about a dozen have been circling the wildlife tower from which we are broadcasting swifts calls to help them find the two new nest boxes:

But they are also very interested in the swift boxes attached to the house. We are not playing calls from here but there is a family of swifts nesting in one of the boxes and so perhaps they can hear the chicks:

The baby swifts in the box are growing fast. Although we were away when the eggs hatched, we think it would have occurred between 17th to 19th June. The chicks fledge five to eight weeks later and so the earliest that this will happen is 22nd July – next Monday – but this is dependant on many factors, including the weather.

On 11th July, there were screaming parties of swifts going round the house and one of the parent birds was in the box looking out at them:

From the outside this looked like this:

Once back from the wedding, the chicks had noticeably grown and developed more of that distinctive swift shape:

Now it is the chicks that are peering out of the hole but they are making me anxious – I do hope that they will be careful not to fall out:

My last photo for today is of a beautiful sunset over the meadows this week.

A sunset is such a fleeting thing and I find it impossible not to attempt to capture its beauty with a photo before it slips away.

This week we needed to visit the Wildwood Trust, near Canterbury, to deliver a very large chinchilla cage that we were donating to them. Pebbles, our old chinchilla, sadly died earlier this year and Wildwood were delighted to accept the cage to keep their rats in.

Wildwood Trust is a native species conservation charity which aims to protect, conserve and rewild British wildlife. Locally in recent years, it has worked with others to reintroduce bison into Blean woods near Canterbury and release red-billed choughs onto the cliffs near Dover, as well as so much more across the country as shown on this information board:

As well as all this fantastic work going on behind the scenes, Wildwood also runs a zoo to showcase British wildlife. Since we were at Wildwood anyway, we took the opportunity to wander round the zoo to see some of our British animals up close. The enclosures at Wildwood are mostly very well vegetated and sometimes the occupant cannot be seen – we like that animal welfare comes first, of course, but it can be disappointing. However, here are some of the animals we did see this time:

We enjoyed ourselves at Wildwood but will need to return again to have another attempt to see some of the animals.

Swifts are another species that need protecting and conserving. Swift Awareness Week at the beginning of July each year sees events being held across the country to celebrate these enigmatic and special birds. I went along to an open day being held at a house in our local town of Deal that, in just a few short years, has become a home to a thriving local colony. As I approached the house, screaming parties of many swifts circled low over my head – guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. I find it very uplifting to see what can be achieved if you care enough.

There are twenty-seven swift boxes up around the three sides of the house and I believe fourteen or more of them are occupied this year. Many of the boxes have good quality cameras in them so that the nests are monitored in detail and much has been learnt about the problems faced by these birds as they bring up their families.

We now have six swift boxes up on our own house and garage, although, for now, there are swifts nesting in just one of them. But for the first time we are able to observe what is going on in that box. As the two chicks are now starting to grow their feathers, they are increasingly being left unattended while both parents go out to collect food for them:

As I watched, a parent entered the box with its white throat noticeably bulging with insects caught on the wing. Bedlam breaks out in the box as the chicks go wild:

The parent puts its beak down a chicks throat and releases the food:

The young swifts really look most extraordinary at the moment. Their little tail feathers are still in their protective sheaths:

I am so enjoying being able to observe the progress of this nest and am learning a lot.

It is estimated that 70% of a badgers diet is made up of earthworms. But in the summer, when the ground is dry and hard, the worms go down deep and are difficult for a badger to get at. So, in order to survive, a badger has to diversify at this time of year and one of the things they can do is to rob wasp and bee nests of their larvae and food stores. They particularly like the nest of the buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, because they have large broods of tasty larvae. I read that a badger’s sense of smell is so acute that it can detect exactly the right night to raid the nest to score the greatest amount of food.

This week a buff-tailed bumblebee nest was dug out by a badger:

The diggings were covered with dead and dying bees. They will have stung the badger but this isn’t enough to deter it:

A nearby camera showed that the nest was dug out by the female badger, with her two cubs in close attendance. She was no doubt teaching them what they have to do to survive a summer when you are a badger. The next night I put a camera to point at the diggings and a cub returned to the scene of the crime:

I am pleased that the cubs are also being brought to the nightly peanuts that we put out for them:

When the sun comes out, it is the marbled white and meadow brown butterflies that are dancing over the meadows now that it is early July:

The trail cameras around the meadows often give insights into what the birds are eating. This crow has raided a nest – perhaps this is a woodpigeon egg?

The magpie has a large cockchafer:

I am getting a lot of photos of song thrush carrying snails in their beaks:

Over in the wood, the newly fledged green woodpeckers are yet to appear on any of the cameras. But I am seeing great spotted woodpecker chicks that have fledged as well:

Every year bullfinch breed in the wood, although I am yet to see their young this year:

This was a treat – a little weasel pops its head up at a pond:

We woke up this morning to find that the country has a new Labour Government and, here in Dover and Deal, we now have a Labour MP. Let us hope that, once the realities of being at the helm begin to bite, the new government sticks to its promises to protect and conserve our wildlife as well as to take the huge problem of the climate emergency very seriously indeed.

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.

Dave was toppled by covid this week and we had to cancel most of the things that we had in the diary and stay at home. However, he is feeling much better now and has emerged from his bed, got onto his tractor and started cutting paths around the rapidly growing grasses out in the meadows.

By the bank holiday weekend Dave was testing negative and we were able to go with our daughter and her boyfriend on an evening wildlife boat trip up the beautiful River Stour. They really wanted to see wild beavers and it is now thought that there are around 140 of them living in the stretch of the river between Canterbury and the sea.

We did see around seven beavers on the trip, a couple of them even standing out on the bank so that we could see their tails. But, since dark was descending fast, I’m afraid that I didn’t manage to get a decent photograph. I did get a few fuzzy photos, however, when we did the same trip back in September 2022:

As well as beavers, we saw kingfishers, kestrels, a cuckoo and bats skimming the waters for flies. It was well past 10pm by the time we returned to our mooring at Grove Ferry, but we all felt like we’d had a great wildlife experience

Back home in the meadows, if we didn’t have a camera in the nest box we would scarcely be aware that the swifts are here, so quietly are they coming and going. We first saw them on the camera on 17th May. On 22nd May I was surprised to see that they had built a circular nest out of feathers stuck together with their saliva – I wasn’t expecting that at all:

Swifts will fly hundreds of kilometres a day whilst feeding – they eat flying insects and also spiders who, although terrestrial, often disperse by launching themselves into the air to be carried on the breeze

They are parasitised by a flat fly, Crataerina pallida, that lives amongst their feathers and sucks their blood. When I first saw this next photo, I thought this insect was one of these horrible things – but then it flew off, so it was actually just an ordinary fly. Flat flies only move through the air hidden amongst the feathers of a bird and can’t fly on their own:

Back in October 2019, John the bird ringer caught a lot of house martins in his net as they migrated across the meadows. House martins have a similar flat fly, Crataerina hirundinis, living in their feathers and, when the bird stops flying because they are caught in the mist net, the flat flies come out to see what is going on:

Until the eggs are laid, the swifts are gone all day long and only return just before it gets dark. Yesterday, however, we did see them repeatedly going in the box during the afternoon. Perhaps they were collecting more airborne feathers?

Then, this morning, a single egg has been laid. Eventually there should be two or three eggs and incubation will only start once the final one has arrived:

The large semi-detached swift box where the swifts are nesting is attached to the side of the house and they are in the right hand side. There is a smaller, single swift box to the right of the big box:

As usual, house sparrows are nesting in this single box. In fact, we only put it up to stop the sparrows nesting in the larger box, keeping it free for the swifts

We have a clump of red hot pokers, Kniphofia, in the garden:

This bank holiday weekend, we were sitting outside with visitors when I saw a house sparrow eating the seeds from one of the red hot poker flowers. Apparently they are fond of these seeds and systematically collect them once the flowers turn yellow. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera to hand but our daughter took a picture on her phone:

In the autumn, the bird ringers have often seen hobbies over the meadows as they migrate south with the swallows. These birds mostly eat dragonflies in the summer but switch to swallows and even swifts, caught on the wing, once dragonfly season is over. We ourselves had never seen a hobby here until one landed on a perch this week:

There is a nice large patch of sainfoin out in the meadows this year which is being well visited by butterflies and bees:

The diminutive grass vetchling is also having a very good year and we are noticing it scattered like delicate, crimson gemstones through the first meadow:

There are several species of the parasitic broomrape found in this country. This one, Orobanche minor, is parasitic on clover:

This bee has collected so much pollen on her hind legs that she has had to stop for a rest on her way back to her nest:

There is constant humming coming from a large and enthusiastically flowering sage bush in the allotment. It is extremely popular with long-tongued bumblebees:

Azure damselflies taking a rest on a water lily from egg laying:

For the second year on the trot we have seen very few green hairstreaks. These butterflies have the widest range of larval food plants of all British butterflies including bird’s foot trefoil, bramble and dogwood, all of which grow abundantly here. So we are happy that it is not something that we are doing that has caused this decline and perhaps they don’t do so well in wet springs:

This silver Y moth has chosen such a good place amongst the plantain to disappear whilst roosting up. If I hadn’t watched it fly in, I’d never have spotted it:

I am very fond of the Mother Shipton. Apparently these moths were named after a 16th century Yorkshire witch, and you can see her profile with a hooked nose and pointy chin on the moth’s wing:

These mint choc chip-coloured beetles are Polydrusus impressifrons:

Four croissant-shaped banks were made last year from chalk and subsoil dug up during our building works. These are now covered in flowers and insect life and we are thoroughly enjoying strolling around admiring them:

One of our little grandsons visited this weekend and, for the first time, walked most of the way round the meadows on his own.

In the wood, I came across a group of four or five fledgling wrens as I was collecting cameras. They created such a racket about being disturbed:

I am not sure that we have any fox cubs in the meadows this year, but we do have some in the wood:

My last photo this week is of our old friend the THV (Trinity House Vessel) Patricia who anchored alongside us one night this week but is looking rather tatty at the moment, we think.

She is the flagship vessel of Trinity House, a charity incorporated by Royal Charter back in 1514 to ensure the safety of shipping and the wellbeing of seafarers. Amongst other things, the Patricia maintains lighthouses, offshore lightships and buoys and she is often to be seen here because of the notorious Goodwin Sands. In fact I see that she currently has three buoys her deck as part of this work. She used to take twelve fare-paying passengers as she went around the UK carrying out her vital work, and we always thought that we would like to do that one day. But she stopped taking passengers in 2020 and so we now have to content ourselves with her occasional but comforting offshore presence alongside the meadows and we are always inexplicably excited when we see her come in and drop anchor.