This week we visited an inspirational swift colony in Deal where an open day was being held to mark Swift Awareness Week. The first box went up on the semi-detached house in a residential street in time for the 2019 season and a pair of swifts arrived that very same year. In 2020 and 2021 three pairs of swifts nested and six young fledged both years. From then on things escalated very quickly – in 2022 there were thirteen pairs of birds producing fourteen chicks and in 2023 there were also thirteen pairs but sixteen chicks. Last year fourteen pairs of birds nested and seventeen baby swifts successfully fledged from the colony. Whilst we were standing there admiring all those boxes, the sky around the house was wonderfully alive with flights of screaming swifts.

We would like to establish our own swift colony here at home but ours is taking much, much longer to get going. Our first two boxes went up in 2019 just like the colony in Deal town, followed by another two the next year. We played loud swift calls around the boxes each summer which certainly did attract a lot of interest:

But it wasn’t until 2023 that a pair of swifts started roosting in the right hand side of the large box. We installed a camera into the box that winter whilst the birds were away in Africa, so we know that they returned to breed the next summer, successfully raising two chicks. They have arrived back again this year as well, laying two eggs that have now hatched. However, things are not quite going to plan in the box but more of that later.

We have recently had a new garage built with a tower that contains two swift boxes and these went into action in 2024. We are now playing swift calls from the tower rather from the boxes on the house, since the house boxes have already been discovered.

This week we took delivery of an exciting new piece of equipment – a thermal imaging monocular that speaks to a mobile phone.

Going forward, we hope to find many uses for this bit of kit, but we were able to put it to work immediately to see if there were birds in the wooden boxes. Here is the large swift box with the known nest shining brightly through the floor on the right-hand side:

However, I am now delighted to report that we have also been seeing a pair of swifts going in and out of the smaller box to the right:

We think that these are second year birds that have now chosen a mate and identified a nest site and will hopefully be back next year as three-year olds to breed.

One morning a group of three swifts were circling the house and repeatedly peering into the box that has the nest in, before flying off and then returning shortly afterwards for another look:

These are the famous swift ‘bangers’ – young, non-breeding birds checking to see if a box is suitable, occupied or empty, sometimes knocking a wing against the box to provoke a response.

I checked the camera to see if all these shenanigans were worrying the chicks inside the box, but they were serenely sitting on their nest, seemingly untroubled by the bangers outside:

There is, however, a problem. I have realised that there is now only a single parent raising these chicks. Last year both adult birds were back in the box by dark and spent every night in there together with their two chicks. This year I have not seen both adults together since coming back from holiday on 22nd June and there is only one parent in with the chicks overnight. I presume that one of the birds has perished.

It makes me feel quite emotional to think of the remaining parent battling on alone against the odds, putting its all into bringing up its young. But although it will be hard work and may take longer, research seems to suggest that it may still be possible to have a successful outcome. The chicks certainly seem to be doing well and have started to occasionally wander off from the nest:

During last weekend’s heatwave they were clearly hot in there:

I am unsure what all this means for our budding little swift colony next year. Will the remaining parent in the semi-detached box find itself another mate for 2026? And will the pair now roosting in the smaller box to the right get safely down to Africa and back to breed? We are planning on getting a camera into the box so that we can see them if they do. There will also be three further swift boxes going up on the north-facing wall over the winter so we hope that next year will be quite exciting.

One of our sons has an entomologist friend who has lent me some of her books:

One night this week I ran the moth trap and was slightly overwhelmed by how many moths I caught. I started going through them all including the micro moths, but quickly realised that I was going to have to just concentrate on the macro moths if I was ever to finish. As it was it took around five hours to identify and record them all. I logged 79 different species, such as three of these swallow-tailed moths, one herald and six Lozotaeniodes formosana, which is a beautiful micro moth that caught my eye:

The shining stars of the catch, though, were the three Sussex Emeralds:

The Sussex emerald is an extremely rare moth in the UK that breeds on wild carrot growing on shingle. Its main breeding site is Dungeness in Kent but it is also found in a couple of other small sites in Kent, one of which is directly below the meadows. Back in 2019 I accompanied the Butterfly Conservation ecologist down onto the shingle below the meadows on his annual count of Sussex Emerald caterpillars. He found several of them on wild carrot and I was very pleased to find one myself on some ragwort which they sometimes use as an alternative larval food plant:

Recent conservation work at Rye Harbour to increase the growth of wild carrot has resulted in the Sussex Emerald now being confirmed as breeding there. This new site is actually in Sussex, so the moth finally once more lives up to its name.

We watched a broad-bodied chaser dabbing her abdomen down into the water of the pond in the meadows to lay her eggs:

Since she is a female broad-bodied, she should by rights be green. However the females of this species sometimes take on some of the appearance of the blue male as they age:

Craneflies aren’t noted for their beauty but these tiger craneflies, Nephrotoma flavescens, are really rather nice:

It has been hot and the ponds in the wood have been popular. It’s good to see the spotty young green woodpeckers, recently fledged from the cherry tree nest, on the trail cameras:

Sometimes they are going around with a parent:

And sometimes it is just the two siblings together:

Jays are enthusiastic bathers throughout the year:

But we only see buzzards come down in weather like this:

And tawny owls as well:

Bullfinch nest in the wood every year and they are also great pond users, so I see them a lot. Their young have now fledged – here is one out with its parents:

And here are two bullfinch chicks on their own:

Not too long ago we dug this pond out in the open of the marjoram grove and put some green corrugated roofing material at its side to increase water run off into the pond and help keep it topped up.

Since a grass snake has been appearing on the trail camera at this pond recently, Dave looked under this green square out of curiosity and was a bit surprised to see a grass snake curled up under it. By the time I got there with my camera it had started to move off – but it was quite large:

This is the first time that I have managed to get a photo with my camera of a snake in the wood. What a treat.

Back in the meadows, a very odd-looking vessel sailed past this week. This is Canopée, a French sail-assisted freighter that launched in 2022 and was specifically designed to transport parts of the Ariane 6 rocket from European ports to the Guiana Space Centre in South America. She has a diesel engine and four wind-powered ‘Oceanwings’ which can cut the fuel consumption of the engine in half.

She looks amazing and is a bit of a pioneer in the quest to reduce the carbon footprint of shipping.

But I finish today with yesterday’s yoga class at Walmer Castle. What a wonderful way to start the weekend, exercising surrounded by bird song and with views down the cloud hedge borders to the Castle:

Once we are back to the short, dark days of winter, it will be difficult for me to believe that this ever happened.

Ever since arriving in the meadows in 2014 we have been keeping a list of bird species that have been seen or heard in or from the meadows. Although things plodded along for the first couple of years, it was only when John and John, bird ringers and both expert birders, started regularly putting their mist nets up here that the list really got going.

Some of the more unusual birds now making an appearance on the list are bee-eater, cuckoo, red-billed chough, alexandrine parakeet, snow bunting and ring ouzel.

A barn owl started visiting the meadows in October 2023 and went onto the list as number 98. Nothing else then happened throughout 2024 but a group of ringers netting in the meadows this April heard a Mediterranean Gull which became number 99.

But we weren’t left dangling on the brink for long. Whilst we were in Shetland last week, John contacted us to say that he had seen a male golden oriole fly over the meadows. What an amazing bird to have on the list as number 100.

But there is now an additional entry on the list as well. We were walking round the meadows this week when we heard the unmistakable purring of a turtle dove coming from a large and densely vegetated holm oak next to the wild pond.

For several years the meadows were part of Operation Turtle Dove. This project started in 2012 aiming to reverse the devastating declines in turtle dove numbers in this country and is a partnership of the RSPB, Fair to Nature, Pensthorpe Conservation Trust and Natural England. When I say a devastating decline I am not exaggerating, because these birds suffered a 99% decline in their UK breeding population between 1967 and 2020.

As part of Operation Turtle Dove we were sent three big bags of seed for supplementary feeding each spring. We spread the seed weekly onto a rotavated strip in the meadows, mimicking cultivated farmland which is where turtle doves love to be. The hope was to catch the eye of a dove as it arrived back in the country in late April and to bring it up into breeding condition as soon as possible so that it could have more than one brood of chicks a season. However, after three years, we had failed to attract a turtle dove here and didn’t want to waste any more of their money so withdrew from the project after the 2021 season.

But there has been some recent good news about turtle doves. Their numbers have increased by 40% in Western Europe since 2021, which was when a temporary hunting ban was put in place in France, Spain and Portugal. Previously around a million turtle doves were being shot each autumn in these countries which was having an enormous impact on the population and was clearly unsustainable. But this hunting ban is not permanent and is being frequently reassessed – we shall have to see what happens next.

So turtle dove has gone onto our bird list as number 101. After hearing it near the pond this week, I put several trail cameras out to see if it would come down for a drink and we would get a look at it. But although we saw stock doves and woodpigeon, we unfortunately have not yet seen the turtle dove:

The cameras will remain in place for a while to see if the bird has stayed in the area and will return to the pond at some point.

There is also a camera in the box where a pair of swifts are once more nesting this year. By 10th June, two eggs had been laid:

On 11th of June, just as we left for Shetland, broken eggshell was visible in the box suggesting that the chicks had hatched:

On our return I am delighted to report that there were two ugly but precious little chicks doing well in the box:

As well as this, a squadron of up to six swifts are often to be seen tearing around the meadows and circling the wildlife tower on the garage where we are playing their calls. Never before has there been so much obvious swift activity here. We have five more swift boxes up and available for use and the hope is that these swifts will have noticed them and will return to nest next year.

As I went through the trail camera photos when we got home from Scotland, young magpies and crows dominated the action:

Great spotted woodpeckers are an unusual sight in the meadows but a juvenile passed through whilst we were away:

Woodpigeon are still displaying and presumably going for another brood:

This is not a good photo but I include it because it is a first – we have not seen a tawny owl with a rat before. It’s amazing it could lift it:

It is lovely to see so many butterflies in the meadows this year.

The chequered form of the 10 spot ladybird, Adalia decempunctata f. decempustulata, has red spots on a black background rather than the other way around:

The badgers were busy digging out two buff-tailed bumblebee nests in our garden while we were away. It has been so dry that it must be difficult for them to get at the worms that would normally make up 70% of their diet:

Nothing much to report about the foxes:

Although here is one with a rabbit at 4am recently just as it was about to get light:

At Walmer Castle, where Dave and I are volunteer wildlife monitors, the toads were mating in the Queen Mother’s pond back in February:

There are now lots of little toadlets in the pond to delight the visitors:

And common darters are emerging from the waters:

There are so many invertebrates visiting the large area of Stachys (lambs ears) in the cloud hedge border including these amazing wool carder bees. Having seen how good this plant is for wildlife I have now planted some up in our garden at home and hope to see wool carder bees here next year:

This next photo is interesting. I was watching this battle on the Stachys for a while and it seemed like the bee was trying to eat a beetle. But this couldn’t be right because the bee just eats pollen and nectar:

There were also several hoverflies with distinctly red abdomens:

Over in the wood, although the shallow ponds dried up whilst we were away….

….the deeper ponds continued to retain some water:

A grass snake has paid two more visits the pond:

It is very lovely to see it.

The green woodpecker chicks fledged while we were away. They were certainly looking ready to go as we left:

And here is one emerging from the hole at first light one morning:

A second chick remained and continued to be fed:

The trail camera failed to capture the second fledging though and now all is quiet at the nest. The excitement is over for another year.

We found three male dormice in separate nests in June’s tour of the thirty dormouse boxes in our wood:

We had been hoping to find litters of young this month but are now speculating that it has been too hot for the dormice to use the boxes. Hopefully they are having litters further up the trees where it is airier.

We did find an additional four dormice nests in the boxes with no one at home. Two of them were beautifully constructed like this one below:

We were away a lot in the first half of the year. Now, with July just around the corner, we are comfortably settled back home for the rest of the summer. I am looking forward to having some quiet time here to get things back under control and potter around enjoying our local wildlife.

It never gets completely dark in Shetland in June, although there are a few hours of ‘simmer dim’ twilight in the middle of the night. After enjoying Orkney so much, we had always planned to visit the Shetland Isles one day and this was the year that we finally made it:

We caught the train from Dover, getting up to London in good time to board the 9.15pm Caledonian sleeper train to Aberdeen. We didn’t get much sleep on the train, but arrived at 7.30am the next morning to spend a day seeing the sights in Aberdeen. Dave had once lived there for five years when he worked on the oil rigs as a geologist for BP. In the late afternoon, we boarded the Hjaltland NorthLink ferry for a comfortable overnight crossing up to Shetland when we caught up on our missed sleep.

The Shetland Isles lie roughly a hundred miles north of the coast of mainland Scotland and there are also about a hundred islands, although only sixteen of them are inhabited.

We were joining a Naturetrek holiday as part of a group of fourteen of us together with two guides. We were all very keen to see what wildlife this most northerly outpost of the British Isles had to offer.

We were staying at the friendly and historic Busta House Hotel near Brae, two thirds of the way up Mainland Shetland. Parts of the building date back to the 16th century:

The hotel had over two hundred whiskies to be tried, some shockingly expensive:

We have always found Naturetrek holidays to be pretty full-on but this one was perhaps even more so. Over the week we toured widely over many of the islands, but a combination of having to rejig plans because of poor weather and some troublesome ferry timetables meant that we were sometimes leaving the hotel quite early in the morning and not arriving back until fairly late. These were often long days of nature watching indeed, but what a lot we saw.

There are several Shetland specialities that I particularly wanted to spot. The Shetland bee is very large and is an absolute corker:

There is also the Shetland wren, Troglodytes troglodytes zetlandicus. This is a separate subspecies of the mainland British wren:

This lovely little wren is endemic to the Shetland archipelago, although the most southerly island, Fair Isle, has its own endemic subspecies of wren. It is darker than the mainland UK bird with heavier barring, a stouter and longer beak and stronger legs:

The oyster plant, Mertensia maritima, is a rare plant that can be found on the north coast of Scotland as well as on Orkney and Shetland. It grows at the top of the beach, just reachable by the high tide.

Its flower buds start off pink but turn blue as they open:

There are, of course, also Shetland ponies everywhere on the islands:

Some of the islands are connected by bridges, but many still rely on ferries as their link to the rest of Shetland.

On one long day we caught a ferry to Whalsay and then another to reach the furthest east remote group of islands, the Out Skerries. The Linga ferry took us to Whalsay and the very powerful Filla, on the right below, took us on to the Out Skerries:

Only thirty-five people now live on the Out Skerries, although the number was double that not so very long ago.

A system of lined channels brings water down off the hills and into a reservoir as part of the water supply for the island:

The islands were very remote and undisturbed and we were hoping for lots of otters. But in the event we only saw this one which disappointingly quickly disappeared under the water:

Wherever we went in Shetland there were fulmars nesting on the cliffs:

This one was nesting in an abandoned ravens nest:

We did see lots of grey seals over the course of the week. On the Out Skerries we also saw a harbour seal hauled out on an old salmon farm enclosure:

A pair of summer plumage dunlin, with their dark belly patches, down at the island’s reservoir for a drink:

There were often sanderling to be seen on the islands, racing in and out with the waves:

And a lot of ringed plover too:

On another day we travelled down to the very south of Mainland Shetland to Sumburgh Head:

The many puffins on the headland were the big attraction:

We saw several birds collecting grass to line their burrows:

But no food was being brought in, so presumably the chicks were yet to hatch. There was a bit of fighting going on though:

There is speculation that puffin numbers have increased recently because so many skuas have been killed by the terrible H5N1 strain of avian flu that has wiped out countless millions of wild birds throughout the world since 2020.

I spent much time frustrating myself by trying to get acceptable photos of puffins in flight:

I did finally manage to get some in focus.

It was difficult to stop photographing the delightful puffins, but there were other birds there as well:

We visited the historical site of Jarlshof where the ruins from multiple eras of habitation all co-exist on the same site. Houses from the Bronze Age 2,500 years ago, through Iron Age, Pictish, Viking times and right up to the 17th century are all there.

Wherever we went on the islands, there was evidence that parent birds were busy rearing their families at this time of year:

One day we joined a twitch of a black-winged pratincole, a bird way out of its normal area. The hardcore birders were getting very excited but we just felt sad for it. We did however see other noteworthy birds which were happily getting on with things in the right place. Red throated divers, on the left below, breed in the freshwater lochs on the islands. Great northern divers on the right below do not breed in Shetland but non-breeding birds are frequently seen there in the summer:

Red-backed shrike was once a widespread breeding bird in Britain up until the 1990s when changing agricultural practices had so affected their large invertebrate prey that we unfortunately lost them. They are still occasional visitors though:

Red-necked phalarope are beautiful teeny weeny waders that are very special and rare breeding birds in the UK. The Shetland island of Fetlar is its main stronghold in the UK and they fly up there from coastal Peru to breed:

Shetland has the highest density of otters in Europe and there are estimated to be up to a thousand there. They are Eurasian otters but, having been isolated for so long, the Shetland otters have become slightly smaller than elsewhere, often with pale markings on their throat. We saw this pair of youngsters whilst we were eating our sandwiches on the beach at Lunna Ness. The otter on the right has caught a fish:

And we saw this dog otter at the Fetler ferry terminal as we were waiting for the boat back to Yell:

One of the highlights of the trip was a night visit to the island of Mousa. Sixty of us packed aboard a boat that left Mainland Shetland at 10.30pm:

The island of Mousa is free from rats and other ground predators which enables 15,000 pairs of storm petrels to nest there in cavities amongst the dry stone walls, building ruins and rocks at the top of the beaches. This represents 40% of the UK’s storm petrel population breeding on this one small island. Five hundred of the pairs are thought to nest in the ancient Broch of Mousa. This 2,500 year old broch is the tallest and most complete broch still standing:

European storm petrels are small – just a little bigger than a sparrow – and spend most of their lives out at sea but come back in the summer to remote Scottish islands to raise one chick per pair

One of the pair takes its turn to incubate the eggs whilst the other goes out to sea for two to three days to feed before returning in the dark to relieve its partner. The other bird then goes out to feed. Once the chicks have hatched, the feeding visits might be a bit shorter but the absent parent always comes back in the dark to avoid predators such as gulls and skuas.

As we stood by the broch, with our head torches on red light only to avoid damaging the birds eyes, they started to return en masse around midnight. It was something that was very difficult to photograph and perhaps it was better to simply relax and experience the amazing wildlife spectacle. This is the best image – a screenshot from a video – that I can show you and you are just going to have to visit it yourselves to properly appreciate the wonder of it!

We got back to the hotel at 2am that night, at the end of an extremely long but successful day.

On the final morning before we were dropped back at the ferry port in the afternoon, we visited the beautiful sand tombolo that connects St Ninian’s Isle to Mainland Shetland:

The waters were crystal clear and teaming with life:

Unfortunately there was a major hiccup on the journey back to Kent. The overnight ferry from Shetland was due to dock at Aberdeen at 7am. However, we arrived to find Aberdeen port closed due to thick coastal fog. Whilst the rest of the UK experienced a heat wave, the super heated air rolled off the land and hit the cold waters of the North Sea forming fog with no wind to move it on. The ferry had to wait a mile offshore for the next eight hours for the fog to clear and the port to reopen. By that time we had long ago missed our train south, and had to spend an unforeseen night in an Aberdeen hotel before catching a train down to London and onwards to home the next day.

We had really enjoyed our week on Shetland and felt that we had had a thoroughly good look at it. For me the Shetland bee, the red phalarope and the storm petrels were the highlights. Dave also includes paddling in the waters around the tombolo, the puffins at Sumburgh Head and being surrounded by breeding wheatears in the list of his special things.

I’m starting this week with an extract from the appealing children’s poem ‘June was Made for Happiness’ written by Annette Wynne a century ago:

June was made for happy things, Boats and flowers, stars and wings, Not for wind and stress, June was made for happiness!

It certainly is a very lovely time of year with birds fledging all around. But one morning persistent, loud alarm calling by the back door alerted me to a potential problem and I found a fledgling blue tit that had taken a wrong turn and come into the house, ending up amongst the baskets in the lobby:

It was such a sweet little thing, still with the remnants of its yellow, fleshy gape at the sides of its beak:

It flew across to the window sill and I was easily able to gather it gently into my hands and return it to its anxious parents just outside.

Family groups of starlings are also now out and about, foraging over the meadows:

Two young crows were parked on one of the perches:

They waited there while food was brought in to them:

But sometimes it wasn’t very much such as the delicate spider arriving here:

We spotted this dragonfly that had just emerged from the hide pond and was preparing itself for its maiden flight. The exciting thing is that it is a four-spotted chaser – a common species but a new one for the meadows:

We have had some visitors this week and one of them, Martin, has allowed me to include some of the excellent invertebrate photos that he took in the meadows:

A common spotted orchid has reappeared down by the wild pond:

Every year we should have a smattering of pyramidal orchids as well, but this is the only one we’ve seen so far:

And later in the year loads of autumn ladies tresses, another type of orchid, will be appearing on our front lawn turning it into a no-go zone for a while.

Egg incubation is still ongoing in the swift box attached to the house:

The pair of birds are coming and going, quietly getting on with rearing their young. But we are also seeing other swifts tearing around the meadows. One morning a small gang of three of them were circling the wildlife tower on the garage. There are two swift boxes installed in there and we are playing loud swift calls from out of one of the nest holes in the hope that they will discover them:

Watching screaming parties of swifts over the meadows and around the house is definitely one of June’s happy things for us. These birds are not here for long and we try to make sure we really notice and appreciate them.

In June, when the nights are short, you often get the chance to see badgers out in the light:

On several evenings recently I have been surprised to see four adult badgers on the camera at the peanuts – we seem to have picked up another one:

The cub is still around but doesn’t yet come to the peanuts:

Although the badgers gather around the sett and at the peanuts, when they go off foraging they are mostly alone other than the cub which follows its mother to learn the ropes. Therefore this photo of four of them together, taken well away from the sett, was most unusual:

It is a bit difficult to judge the size of the animal in the photo below but, with that black tail tip, I think that it must be a stoat:

Over in the wood, one of the bird boxes has a nest of tree bumblebees in it. These bees have a ginger thorax and a black abdomen with a white tail:

The next two photos are of the bumblebee mimic hoverfly, Criorhina berberina, on the left and an actual bumblebee, the early bumblebee, Bombus pratorum, on the right. A bit like the ant mimic flies above, the hoverfly would like a predator to mistake it for a stinging bee and it is doing quite a good job of pretending to be one. But actually the eyes are so very different, as are the antennae. Both are Martin’s photos:

Poking around in the marjoram clearing in the wood, we found a burnished brass moth spending the day on a leaf, awaiting the arrival of the short June night when it would fly again. It wasn’t very well hidden so I hope it survived until then:

We also saw a soldier fly in the marjoram grove and this was the first time I’d seen one. There are forty-seven species of soldier fly in the UK and this one is the broad centurion, Chloromyia formosa, one of the most common:

This broad centurion had a strangely voluminous abdomen just visible under her wings, but nothing like the size of the abdomen of another soldier fly, the clubbed general, Stratiomys chamaeleon. Here is a photo of a clubbed general from Wiki Commons:

I would really like to see a clubbed general one day but they are extremely rare, although found at a few sites in Oxfordshire which is not a million miles away. There is a similar-looking soldier fly called the banded general, Stratiomys potamida. These banded general flies are more widely distributed so perhaps I should start with them.

The green woodpecker chicks have developed to the stage that they are shouting loudly out of the nest hole, demanding to be fed:

And there is certainly a lot of food being brought in to them:

It has been so very dry in East Kent this spring and the ponds in the wood are very low indeed:

The fox cubs are starting to get a bit bigger now that we have reached June:

These days I am part of the volunteer wildlife monitoring team at Walmer Castle and this week hoverfly expert Martin and I toured the Castle grounds to identify any that we saw. But, whilst we were looking for hoverflies, we spotted two species of interesting bees. Wool carder bees, Anthidium manicatum, were on the lamb’s ear plants. A very robust male bee here:

We also saw a very exciting and rare bee, the ruderal bumblebee, Bombus ruderatus. The male of these bees can come in this lovely all-black form:

But we did actually see nine species of hoverfly at Walmer Castle as well. This one was my favourite:

I finish today with our art installation-cum-wildlife habitat that our daughter-in-law built for us a couple of years ago in the meadows. We have already seen species of reptile, mammal and invertebrate that have made their home amongst the safety and warmth of these tiles and, with its billowing oxeye daisies, this definitely looks to me like one of those ‘June’s happy things’ that Annette Wynne wrote her poem about:

Last weekend we spent a day with the Kent county recorder of Dragonflies and Damselflies. Kent is the best place in the country to see a wide variety of these amazing creatures and the weather was sunny, hot and calm which was exactly right. This was a Naturetrek day trip and we were a small group of only four which was the perfect number.

Dragonflies are amazing creatures and considered to be the most successful predators in the animal kingdom. Their powerful wings, agile flight with all four wings moving independently, and precise vision with each compound eye made up of at least 20,000 lenses, mean that they have more than a 95% success rate when pursuing their prey.

Damselflies are similar to dragonflies but are smaller, slimmer and a lot less powerful, folding their wings along their body at rest, unlike dragonflies who hold their wings away from their body.

We started the day at Westbere Lake to the east of Canterbury, where we pottered around the ditches and dykes before making our way south to the banks of the Great Stour river.

There were quite a few different species of damselfly to be seen there.

We learnt that blue-tailed damselfly females come in five different colour forms and we enjoyed ourselves trying to spot all of these. Clockwise from top left: infuscans (with a green thorax), typica (a blue one), rufescens (orange) which matures to rufescens-obsoleta (not pictured) and violacea (violet):

The banded demoiselle is a most beautiful damselfly:

We saw several species of dragonfly there as well. There were numerous scarce chaser dragonflies:

We also saw female scarce chasers but my photos weren’t great. Dave, however, got this photo of a female scarce chaser in Dorset a fortnight ago:

Our guide found us several scarce chaser exuvia. The aquatic dragonfly nymph spends one or two years developing before climbing up some vegetation and out of the water. The adult then emerges by bursting out of the thorax, leaving the empty shell – the exuvia – clinging to the plant:

Hairy dragonfly were patrolling just above the water surface:

If you are wondering why it is called hairy, you can see its hairy thorax below:

The Norfolk hawker is a rare and red-listed dragonfly which, until recently, was restricted to the Norfolk Broads in the UK. However, this species has been expanding its range and there is now a population of these lovely brown dragonflies with their bright green eyes in Kent. We saw several at Westbere:

Dave spotted what is very probably a Norfolk hawker exuvia across the water of the dyke:

Whilst we were on the look out for dragonflies and damselflies, we inevitably spotted some other things as well. The dyke was packed full of beautiful fish with red fins. I know very little about freshwater fish but think these must be rudd:

This red and black froghopper is Cercopis vulnerata:

A beautiful Helophilus pendulus hoverfly:

A green drake mayfly, Ephemera danica, was lying dead on a leaf. The life span of the adult phase of a mayfly’s life is four days at the most:

A downlooker snipefly, Rhagio scolopaceus, is a predator that catches smaller insects in flight:

This is a stretch spider, probably Tetragnatha extensa although there are several similar species. Commonly found on vegetation near water:

Having finished at Westbere Lake, we decided to move location to Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory (SBBOT) where they have recently dug some sandy pools which have become a stronghold for Britains rarest damselfly, the dainty damselfly. This species was historically only found at a site in Essex but was lost there after terrible flooding in spring 1953. It was then considered an extinct species in Britain until some more were found at Elmley on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent in 2010. Another fragile population was discovered during a bioblitz at Sandwich Bay in 2019 but numbers have improved significantly at The Bay since SBBOT dug these new pools:

We found large numbers of dainty damselflies at Sandwich Bay. In fact there were so many that we were becoming quite blasé about these incredibly rare creatures.

Our guide found us a dainty damselfly exuvia as well:

He had recently found scarce blue damselfly at these pools but, despite extensive searching, he couldn’t spot any this time.

We found some mating black-tailed skimmers there. The pair were demonstrating how the legs of the female rub the blue from the abdomen of the scarce chasers that we had seen earlier:

The female black-tailed skimmer once they had parted:

Back in 2017 we saw a female red-veined darter laying her eggs into one of our ponds in the meadows:

This was exciting because, although this species is a frequent migrant to the UK and breeding is regularly seen, the population doesn’t seem to have become stable in this country yet. However, our big dragonfly and damselfly day last weekend finished with a grand finale when we noticed two of these male red-veined darters patrolling over one of the Sandwich Bay pools and regularly coming to rest on the sand at the side. They were in very fresh condition and our guide thought that they had probably emerged there rather than migrated in:

The day was hot and tiring but also very rewarding and enjoyable. By the end of it, the group had managed to see fourteen species:

Dragonflies: Norfolk Hawker, Scarce Chaser, Emperor, Broad Bodied Chaser, Hairy Dragonfly, Red-veined Darter and Black-tailed Skimmer

Damselflies: Banded Demoiselle, Variable, Azure, Blue tailed, Large Red, Red eyed, Common Blue and Dainty Damselfly

Several of these species were new to us and we have come away with so much more understanding and appreciation of these wonderful creatures.

There is so much to be appreciated about May and I wish that it hadn’t disappeared quite so fast. Over the course of the month the meadows have undergone a dramatic transformation and are now cheerfully clothed in oxeye daisies:

Some summer butterflies have emerged and are frolicking around amongst the flowers.

May is also a busy time in the moth trap. Moths have such lovely names: clockwise from top left is the figure of eighty, waved umber, privet hawkmoth and peach blossom:

It’s the time of year when many birds are getting on with the serious business of rearing their young. We returned from France on 5th May to find that the pair of swifts nesting in the box on the side of the house had arrived back before us:

It had been a long migration for them up from sub-Saharan Africa and they spent two weeks recovering and slowly rebuilding last year’s nest. Since these birds never come down to the ground, they can only use material that they catch in mid air:

We spotted the first egg on 22nd May:

And a second one had arrived by 24th:

I am a bit uncertain about when the incubation of the eggs actually started but I think it was around 25th May:

Occasionally both birds leave the nest, enabling us to see the eggs. Here you can see a swift flat fly, Crataerina pallida, on the egg at the front:

And also on one of the birds:

These blood-sucking flat flies live amongst the swifts’ feathers and in their nests:

House martins have a very similar flat fly parasite, Crataerina hirundinis, and we saw these up close in 2019 when John the bird ringer caught some house martins in his mist net. The flies stay deep within the feathers when the bird is flying but come to the surface when it stops moving:

I wish I had taken a photo of these flies with my macro camera so that I can see them in more detail.

Whilst we were in France at the beginning of May, the dog was in kennels for nearly two weeks and in that time the meadows became filled with fox cubs from three separate litters. But, soon after the dog returned, all these cubs were taken elsewhere by their parents and we are no longer seeing them here.

This year’s badger cub is still here in the meadows even after the dog’s return. The weather has been so dry, though, that I am worrying about how it is getting on:

We have not been seeing many birds of prey at this time of year but a tawny owl was here in mid May:

And a barn owl has visited a few times as well:

This kestrel has caught himself a lizard:

And a crow has found a crab….

…and also a young rat:

Dragonflies are now on the wing:

And this little shrew ventured down into the shallow baking tray pond for a drink:

We found four dormice on the May tour round the dormice nest boxes that are up in our wood:

Although there were signs of them starting to build nests, there were no dormice litters as yet.

The green woodpeckers are continuing to nest in a mature cherry tree:

This next photo was a bit alarming though. I think this is a chick in its beak:

But there is a loud churring noise coming from the nest hole now so there are definitely some more chicks in there. The great spotted woodpecker chicks, however, have already fledged:

Further up the same cherry tree that the green woodpeckers are nesting in, a bright yellow chicken of the woods fungus is billowing out of a disused woodpecker hole:

I am often finding glow-worm larvae in the wood and imagine that there must be a healthy population there. I would love to someday see an adult female glow-worm glowing in the dark to attract in a male and our wood must be a good place to start, although in June this would mean visiting really quite late.

We have a trail camera looking at a burrow in the ground and there is currently a rabbit living down there:

But at all times this rabbit has to remain on high alert because its predators are all around:

I finish today with a photo of one of the twenty-seven white helleborines, a type of orchid, that have now appeared in an area of the wood that we thinned out three winters ago:

It was wonderful to see so many of these elegant, special plants growing in the wood this May. We are taking it as proof that all of the hard work we do in the wood over winter is actually making a difference and is worth all of the effort.

All six species of British native reptile can be found in Dorset and this week we spent three days searching for them. We were also looking for the six native amphibians that are in Dorset, as well as two established populations of non-native lizards – it was a very full few days.

This was another Naturetrek holiday and several expert herpetologists (amphibian and reptile experts) from the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC Trust) were our guides for the next few days.

We all met up at Mortons Manor in Corfe Castle at 3.30pm on Monday for an introduction, but in no time at all we were off to Creech Heath, one of the eighty reserves that the ARC Trust own or manage for ‘herps’ in Dorset and Surrey.

On this first reserve we found four smooth snakes, Coronella austriaca, sheltering under the tins. By the end of our time in Dorset, we had found over fifteen of them:

We also found a grass snake, Natrix helvetica, under one of the tins:

The third British snake species is the adder. These are sometimes found warming up under tins, but more often are to be found basking out in the open. Despite turning over so many tins in the numerous ARC Trust reserves we visited, as well as being taught where to look for them basking, we failed to see an adder during this holiday. We were assured, however, that they were definitely around but just keeping out of our way.

After dinner on the first day we went off on a trip to look for natterjack toads in the dark. However, we were scuppered by the weather – it had been so hot and dry that all the toads had buried themselves away in the soil.

We did, however, see natterjack tadpoles which was something:

The morning of the second day of the holiday was spent visiting a large ARC Trust reserve called Parley Common. It was here that we got our first glimpse of a sand lizard:

The sloughed skin of a smooth snake was found under one of the tins at Parley Common.

We found a smooth snake that was about to shed its skin. We knew this because its eyes were milky – the skin is shed from the entire length of the animal including its eyes which go milky as the skin slowly detaches itself before shedding:

There was a dead grass snake under one of the tins:

Although the snake was only very recently dead, a sexton beetle, Nicrophorus vespillo, had already arrived and will now start to bury the corpse and lay its eggs on it so that its larvae will have a safe food source.

I know that this is not a very good photo of a Dartford warbler but it’s the best I got and does show its amazing red eye:

Scarce chaser dragonflies were seen at Parley Common:

In the afternoon we drove to the seaside at Boscombe, a busy suburb of Bournemouth and really quite urban. We were there to see two non-native lizard populations: western green lizards, Lacerta bilineata, and wall lizards, Podarcis muralis.

We did see a western green lizard on the clifftop, but this is definitely not one of my better photos. As I was trying to switch my camera to manual focus to stop the camera focusing on the grass, the lizard moved off:

However, we did see these lizards in La Brenne in central France a few years ago. The male is on the left and the female on the right:

The female has lost her tail at some point and regrown a stubby new one made of cartilage. Apparently these lizards store quite a lot of fat reserves in their tails and this might well have been a big problem for her later in the year as she tried to put on sufficient fat to hibernate.

We saw lots of wall lizards as we descended the zigzag path down Portman Ravine onto the beach:

We stood for a while watching a male trying to interest a female by biting her:

It had been a very long day and we got back to Mortons Manor not much before 7pm. After dinner, we were back out again in the dark to try to see the three native species of newt: smooth, palmate and great crested.

We visited the Green Pool, part of another ARC Trust reserve. After an exceptionally dry spring, the water level was very low which made newt-hunting tricky.

They were not able to catch much from the banks of the pool so they waded in:

There were a lot of water scorpions in the water:

We did eventually find all three species of newt in this one pool. Here is a young great crested newt:

Last October we had a better view of a great crested newt when we rescued one that was stuck in a bucket in our daughter’s garden:

We had three amphibian experts with us at Green Pool but all three of them were completely flummoxed by this next newt:

We got back to the hotel at around 11.30pm. Naturetrek holidays are always pretty full-on but this one was on another level with the addition of the after-dinner trips out in the dark to spot amphibians.

On the last day of the holiday it was gently raining but we visited two more ARC Trust reserves. More smooth snakes were found at Great Ovens reserve as well as our first slow worm of the trip:

The great fox-spider, Alopecosa fabrilis, has recently been rediscovered at Great Ovens reserve. This is one of the UK’s largest and most endangered spider species that hadn’t been seen anywhere in the country for nearly twenty years and was feared extinct.

Rhododendron is absolutely beautiful at this time of year but is actually an invasive nightmare:

Gorse can also be a real problem as well because it just does too well in heathland habitats and is difficult to control. In our final reserve at Lytchett Bay, some of the gorse was covered in webbing made by the red gorse mite, Tetranychus lintearius. This tiny spider mite lives in colonies on the gorse protected by spun silk webs and it is hoped that they can eventually be used as a biological control:

We were delivered back to the hotel at 4pm, before starting our drive back to Kent. Over the course of our short herpetological holiday in Dorset we had learned so much from the lovely ARC Trust experts who are working hard to conserve and promote British reptiles and amphibians. In just three days our group had seen five of the six British native reptiles (we never did see an adder), and two additional bonus species of non-native reptiles. We had also seen five of the seven native species of amphibian, just missing the common frog and the pool frog that is not found in Dorset. We had also been introduced to several great ARC Trust reserves that we will certainly be returning to in the future to see if we can finally spot that elusive adder basking in the sunshine.

We have been staying at Elmley Nature Reserve on the Isle of Sheppey, just off the north coast of Kent, twice a year for a while. One trip is in the winter to see the owls and the marsh harrier roost and the other in May when the baby animals are around. On each visit we see different things and come away full of joy at what a wild and wonderful place we have just an hour’s drive away from home.

We arrived there in the sunshine of this week to stay in the Saltbox, our favourite large and comfortable shepherd hut with far-reaching views out over the marsh:

May is a time of billowing cow parsley and fresh new leaves on the oaks:

Probably the most memorable thing about this visit was the three cuckoos that were flying between the trees on the raised land around the farmhouse. Two of them were males and spent much of the time perched and calling from a large willow just behind our hut.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a better photo of them, but these silhouettes below show their long, pointy wings as they flew around in the gathering dusk:

We discovered a couple of interesting things about cuckoos that we hadn’t known before. The first thing is that they are often still calling as they fly, and the second and rather surprising thing is that they continued calling right through the night. This was close to where we were sleeping and, although it didn’t disturb me, it gave Dave a bad night and had indeed sent him a little bit cuckoo by the morning.

Cuckoos famously parasitise other birds by laying an egg in their nests. The cuckoo egg will then be the first to hatch and the young bird will push all the other eggs out of the nest. One of their favoured hosts is the reed warbler and we certainly heard a lot of these birds amongst the vegetation of the marsh.

Cuckoos also specialise in eating hairy caterpillars which are avoided by other birds because the hairs irritate their gut. We did see many hairy caterpillars on the reserve, such as lots of lackey moth caterpillars on the oaks, with their smoky-blue stripes and face, and vast numbers of brown-tail moth caterpillars on hawthorns down on the marsh. The female cuckoo should have plenty to eat as she waits for a reed warbler to leave its nest unattended for a moment so that she can sneak in unnoticed.

Another memorable sight this time was of a goldfinch sitting on her nest incubating her eggs:

However, I am sad to report that things all went horribly wrong for this nest. By the next morning it had been raided:

A third memorable thing was hearing two booming bitterns from different areas of the reserve. Sounding a bit like someone blowing across the top of a bottle, this is a loud and amazing sound to be emanating from out of the marsh.

The reserve is managed for breeding redshank and lapwing in particular although, if conditions are right for them, they are also right for much else. We certainly saw plenty of both of these two species but it seemed that we were too early for their chicks. Next year we should perhaps go later in May.

We were also too early for dragonflies, but surely not by much. This four-spotted chaser had just emerged as an adult and couldn’t yet fly:

Moorhen eggs, however, had already hatched. Some of the young were being kept around the shepherd huts to give them some protection from predators:

There are no badgers on Sheppey, and foxes, stoats and hedgehogs are controlled on the reserve. But one predator in particular would still be a problem for the chicks – the marsh harrier:

In May last year we saw a marsh harrier making off with a chick:

Marsh harriers are also very keen to catch leverets if they can. There are so many hares at Elmley and we got a good look at one of the adults enjoying the sunshine:

Not only do they have really long hind legs….

…their front legs are also surprisingly lengthy:

Like the moorhen chicks, some of the leverets are parked by their mothers amongst the shepherd huts, offering some sanctuary from the harriers. Back in May 2023 there was a particularly tame one:

Some other birds that we spotted this time at Elmley:

It is always lovely to see yellow wagtails at Elmley:

The female on the right below is so much paler than the male on the left, now in his breeding plumage

In winter everyone gets terribly excited about the owls at Elmley, me included. A lot of this is because of the thirty or so short-eared owls that roost in a field by the car park and are often easily viewable.

At the end of the winter, most of these short-eared owls leave, travelling north to Scandanavia, Russia and Iceland to breed. However, last year at least two pairs of short-eared owls stayed put and bred on the reserve, successfully fledging several young. This May there are once more short-eared owls remaining at Elmley and the hope is that they will again be breeding. We saw one of these owls out hunting as we went on a dusk tour with a nature guide:

Little owls are on the reserve all year. If you are on a nature tour, you are usually taken off the path to see the little owl nest box at the back of the old school house:

Little owls are nesting in this box and the next morning we saw one of the adults sunbathing amongst the ruins:

Barn owls are also resident at Elmley and there are apparently several pairs nesting there this year. Unfortunately we didn’t see a barn owl this time but I include a photo of one from a previous trip:

Long-eared owls also still remain on the reserve this spring, roosting in the day by the car park. However, they are very difficult to spot, especially when the trees have leaves. We did see one back in January though:

The best way to see them at this time of year is to wait for them to emerge at dusk. But, although we sat on a bench by the car park with the nature guide for a while, we weren’t lucky enough to spot one this time.

So once again we had a wonderful nature experience at Elmley. We were only there for 24 hours but saw so much.

We plan to return for a winter visit in January. Those noisy old cuckoos will be long gone by then and Dave will be hoping for a better night’s sleep.

We have returned from France to discover that inexperienced, young fox cubs were wandering round the meadows on their own and, before very long at all, there was an unfortunate incident with a fox cub in the dog’s mouth. Thankfully she doesn’t have many teeth these days and we were close by, so we quickly had the little cub on its way again, scampering back onto the cliff with no damage done. But it was all very stressful and we are now having to strictly control the dog to avoid this happening again.

The dog is now only allowed out on a lead until these cubs grow up a bit:

They are ridiculously sweet:

This cub is from the den at the top of the meadows.

Although this next photo gave me a bit of a shock:

There is a second fox den in the lower far corner, in the area that we call the amphitheatre. There are at least four cubs here and it is one of these that was recently found in the dog’s mouth:

A camera looking at the hole under fence is giving us some lovely views of these amphitheatre cubs:

I particularly like this photo of two of the cubs viewing some pigeons with interest:

There has been a lot of food being carried in. This looks like it is some sort of bird:

And this looks like a little chick:

The third den is on the cliff below the house and we are seeing these cubs in the back garden. They have a slightly different look to them:

One of the fox families relaxing by the pond in the early evening:

Back in 2022 it was another sort of cub that was causing us problems as we tried to keep it safe from the dog:

In June of that year the dog discovered one of the cubs fast asleep above ground in the shrubbery flanking the garden. We decided that this was such unusual behaviour that we called the RSPCA who took it off to a vet to be checked over. It was declared to be fine and released back into the meadows a couple of hours later:

But sadly things didn’t end well. There was a terrible drought here that summer and none of the three badger cubs survived.

This year there is a single cub and to date it has remained firmly underground during daylight hours, thank goodness. It’s an absolute fluff ball:

The mother is holding it down here so that she can clean it:

But the cub is really being rough-housed by its father here:

A lovely photo of last year’s cub, now nearly an adult:

And I think this is the mother badger emerging from the burrow by day:

My sister who lives in Berkshire often has lots of dogs visiting her. One of them must have discovered a mallard nest in long grass at the bottom of her garden and scared the female duck off the eggs:

The garden is in a rural location near the River Loddon and I am envious of their bats in the attic, red kites nesting in their trees and barn owls perching on the floodlights on the house. But a mallard nest was a first for them so they took advice and put a wire fence around the nest to protect it from the dogs. Initially the female duck did return and resume incubating the eggs, but unfortunately subsequently abandoned the nest despite their best efforts.

Whilst we were in France our pair of mallards continued their daily visits to the pond in the meadows just before dawn. They will have had a nest with eggs tucked away somewhere like the one in my sister’s garden. Before leaving the nest each morning to come to the pond, the female duck will have hidden her eggs with feathers plucked from her own breast to protect them from predators:

The two swifts are settling back into their box again after their long journey up from Africa:

So far they have added some strands of dried grass and a single feather to the black circle of last years nest:

But no egg has appeared as yet.

Now that it is May, more butterfly species are starting to emerge:

Two ‘blue’ butterfly species have been seen so far. The holly blue:

And the small blue:

We should also be seeing common blue and brown argus as well at some point.

I have an on-going project to attract more species of blue butterflies to the meadows and I am targeting my efforts on the adonis blue and the chalkhill blue, neither of which have ever been seen here. The larval food plant for both of these species is horseshoe vetch, plugs of which I planted onto the new chalk banks constructed during the building of our garage two years ago. This vetch is now doing really well and flowering profusely:

Over in the wood, I like this set of three photos taken by a trail camera looking at a hole in the ground:

A photo taken elsewhere in the wood shows a vixen that is clearly nursing young. There are no rights of way close to the wood and these cubs of hers should at least be safe from dogs:

Bullfinch always nest in the woods:

I have been seeing a firecrest at this pond throughout the winter and was really pleased to see it still visiting in May. Could it be nesting? Although our wood doesn’t have conifer trees, there are plenty in the wider wood:

I think there are squirrels nesting in this owl box although there has been very little recent action on the camera. A stock dove did visit to see if it could nest in there though:

In contrast there has been a lot of activity at the green woodpecker nest:

But I can offer no explanation for this next photo showing the male bird flying away from the nest with an egg. What is going on?:

This little robin was singing so loudly and so beautifully in the wood that I stopped and listened to it for ages. It even posed for a photo:

My last photo today is this one which made me smile:

Although we have visited France many times over the years, there is still so much of it to see. We have just returned from a week in Languedoc in south west France which is an interesting area of the country that I had never been to before. We were part of a guided Naturetrek holiday but, while the rest of the group flew into Carcassonne, we took two nights to drive down through France to join them.

After taking the ferry from Dover to Calais, we stayed near Troyes on the first night, visiting the Champagne house of Drappier to buy a few bottles of their delicious champagne the next morning. It was then a long drive south to the tiny wine village of Gigondas just into Provence for the second:

When we finally arrived in Languedoc on the third day, we saw that there must also be a great deal of wine produced there too. Every scrap of agricultural land in the region is covered in vines:

What is not suitable for vines is covered by the natural garrigue scrubland vegetation:

Our hotel for the week was in a little village near Narbonne, close to the foothills of the Pyrenees and the Spanish border.

There were fourteen of us in the group and two guides, Jason and Martin, and for the next week we travelled around the region in two minibuses.

The weather was calm and dry all week. However, France had had an unusually wet winter and early spring, resulting in many more mosquitos around than normal. This was a problem on the first day when we weren’t properly prepared for them and all got badly bitten. As a result we remained swathed in long sleeves and trousers for the rest of the week despite the heat, although few mosquitoes were subsequently encountered.

We saw around 120 species of bird over the course of the week, many of which Dave and I hadn’t seen before. I managed to get photos of some of them:

But it wasn’t all about the birds. We saw a lot of butterfly species too.

There were many orchid species to be seen at this time of year as well. Everyone got very excited by the rare large flowered bee orchid:

We didn’t see any snakes during the week but we did see several species of lizard, including these amazing Moorish geckos which looked like mini crocodiles:

The ends of their toes were flattened against the wall:

We also found these sweet little parsley frogs, and this one required moving to safety:

Many invertebrates were seen, photographed and identified over the course of the holiday but I include just two species of spider here because this post is already getting rather long:

We very much enjoyed our exploration of Languedoc, and the week spent with a group of interesting and like-minded people.

We drove back up through France, this time spending only one night halfway up the country in the fortified town of Langres. The Hotel de la Poste is apparently the oldest hotel in France and, although we have stayed there several times before, it has to be twenty-five years since we were last there. The hotel is the whole of this building and its eccentric roofline is very memorable:

We returned home to Kent and were delighted to find that our pair of swifts had arrived back before us:

I wonder if they were two of the 121,931 swifts that had flown past the migration watch at Leucate?