There has been a diminutive but exciting visitor to the meadows recently – a weasel, a pocket-sized predator, which has now been seen several times crossing this gate. It is a small mammal specialist, cashing in on the abundance of mice and voles that have been around this autumn.

We last saw a weasel on the gate in the autumn of 2022, when the weather was less drab and grey than it has been recently and the image is therefore sharper:

Weasels don’t make their own den but use a nest of their prey, often lining it with dry vegetation and rodent fur. We know where our weasel’s den was because the dog had a non-contact confrontation with it there before it shot back down underground. I was pleased to be nearby because it was very special to hear the extraordinary calls of a weasel for the first time.

I rushed to get two cameras trained onto the den, knowing the weasel was down there:

I didn’t know that rats also preyed on rodents smaller than themselves but here one is with a vole:

But it is not just weasels and rats eating the voles. They have also been taking a hammering from the birds of prey that have been hunting here this autumn. Each of the photos in this gallery below is a different rodent being eaten by the ringed kestrel over this last fortnight:

A barn owl has been successfully catching them in the dark….

..and a tawny owl is also out hunting for rodents at night:

This buzzard is after them too, although it would also be prepared to go for something larger such as a rat or a rabbit:

It has been wonderful to see so many predators arriving to cash in on the small mammal population here this autumn. The vole population is naturally cyclical and this seems to have been a very good year for them.

The sparrowhawk is the only bird of prey around here that isn’t interested in the voles:

The barn owl has been visiting the meadows every night recently. But what I was really excited to notice was that there is no sign of a ring on the right leg of this bird:

This is interesting because we have recently seen a ringed barn owl as well, so we now know that there are two different animals. The ringed bird is on the left and the non-ringed one on the right below:

Another photo of the ringed bird eating a vole:

They are certainly magnificent animals:

And nice to see it using the haypile to look for rodents:

Of course I haven’t been able to resist ordering a barn owl nest box now that they are regularly using the meadows. It will probably arrive too late for next year’s breeding season but we are forever optimistic.

Jays are very busy collecting and burying acorns from the holm oaks in the autumn:

Jays can carry one acorn in their beak and about five more in their crop. This jay below is certainly carrying acorns in its distended crop as well as in its beak:

This can be be seen more clearly in this photo from 2021 of another jay with a crop full of acorns:

The badgers are continuing to drag more bedding into their sett in preparation for the winter to come. Badgers do not hibernate but instead slow down into a winter torpor:

Reptiles and amphibians, however, do hibernate and we found this pit of hibernating lizards tucked away under a sampling square:

Unfortunately this most unwelcome visitor is able to pull hibernating frogs out from the bottom of the pond:

We’ve seen it take three or four frogs from this pond in the last two days:

We are going to have to get our scarecrow, MacKenzie, out from the shed and put him on duty by the pond. We didn’t need him at all last winter, so goodness knows what state he will be in and he may need some refurbishment first.

Over in the wood, a toad is once more hibernating under a large sheet of corrugated tin where it will at least be safe from herons. We had specifically gone to look for it because it was there last winter as well and that was the first time we had seen a toad in the wood:

The strange, contorted white saddle fungus has come up both in the wood and in the meadows:

A beautiful nuthatch has been coming down to this woodland pond a lot recently. We don’t see nuthatches in the meadows so its always special to see them in the wood:

Several winter visitors are now being spotted by the cameras in the wood. The first woodcock was seen on the 8th November. These birds have travelled from Russia and Finland to escape the harsh weather there and spend the winter in the gentler temperatures of our wood where the ground is not frozen hard for months:

Fieldfares, too, have now arrived:

As have some lesser redpoll with that lovely claret red patch on their heads:

We have gone round the large raptor boxes in the wood to empty them of nesting material. Every one of them showed signs that squirrels had nested this year.

There is a camera on a pole trained on this tawny owl box below and I had already looked at its SD card and seen that it showed no activity. So we were therefore very shocked indeed when Dave knocked on the box before opening it, just to be on the safe side, and a tawny owl flew out. I hope it comes back again soon – we would like it to nest in there next year instead of the squirrels.

We met a forester in the wood this week to discuss some hazel coppicing that he is going to do for us over the winter. On our way to show him the hazel, we passed the lovely stand of silver birch in the centre of the wood which has now reached maturity:

He advised us that, if nothing is done with these trees, they will soon start to fall over, at which point they would look awful and can no longer regenerate from their base. We would eventually need to clear them all away and replant.

But if these trees are harvested now, the stumps will regrow to form coppices and the cycle naturally continues. This silver birch wood is commercially viable as fast-burning firewood and he would buy it off us to help finance the coppicing work.

This all seems very sensible and we are now considering commissioning a woodland management plan from an expert which would set out a plan of works going forward over the years. We would then need to apply to the forestry commission for a felling licence to take these silver birch down next winter. This would be a very bold step to take and I love those trees and will be so sad to see them felled. But it does sound like it might be the right thing to do for the long term health of the wood.

One day this week we returned to Hawkshill Freedown, an area of 13.5 acres close to home that is now being managed for nature by the community. Back in early September we had walked up to see how the flower meadow there was getting on, and found it looking rather lovely:

But the Hawkshill meadow has now been cut and the arisings needed to be moved off the land. A heart-warming number of local people had turned up to assist:

It was actually great fun to help out. A large hay pile was created off to the side which will provide a habitat for invertebrates and reptiles:

A great sense of satisfaction to have got the job done.

Dave saw a house martin swooping over the meadows on Monday as it made its way south. What has stopped it leaving until now? I do hope it hasn’t left it too late, all on its own, battling its way down the length of Europe as winter starts to take its grip. The swifts left nearly four months ago at the end of July and I like to think of them now, swanning around in the heat of Central Africa as I zip up my coat and put on my gloves to go out into the meadows. In just over a month it will be the shortest day and then I will allow myself to anticipate them returning to the meadows once more next year.

The Scottish Highlands are magnificent at this time of year, swathed in their rich autumnal colours. We have just returned from a week’s photography holiday there and were amazed by how beautiful it is.

There was a bit of time to fill as we approached Aviemore, our home for the week. So we called in at Ruthven Barracks which were built to accommodate Redcoats, tasked with maintaining law and order in the Highlands after the failed Jacobite uprising of 1715:

On the afternoon of the third day, we met our Naturetrek guide and four fellow group members at our hotel on Loch Alvie and the busy week of photography got underway:

We were generally quite lucky with the weather because it hardly rained all week, although it was often overcast and windy. However, when the sun did come out, the place looked completely amazing:

I was helped by Oliver, our guide, both with the composition and the subsequent tweaking of this next photo and I have to say that I’m especially pleased with it:

We spent one morning in a red squirrel hide, set amongst the heather and beautiful Scots pines of the Caledonian forest:

Nuts and seeds are regularly put out around the hide to keep the squirrels coming by to have their pictures taken:

The squirrels themselves are adorable even though they don’t have their tufty ears at this time of year:

There were some picturesque logs around for them to pose on:

We tried to get decent shots of them jumping:

There were probably four squirrels visiting:

We enjoyed our time in the red squirrel hide so much that we would like to try some more hides now. One of our fellow group members recommended a kingfisher hide in Lincolnshire – also a long way away from East Kent but perhaps we can build a visit to it into a nice weekend away.

Dave spotted a squirrel having a rest a bit further away and took a photo through his birding scope and onto his phone:

We saw some birds as well whilst we were in the hide and I particularly like this photo of a wren. I’m often surprised at how long their beaks are:

On another morning we went to an area of the forest where there are feeders up to bring crested tits in. Beautiful lichen-covered perches were also available to place near the feeders to encourage the birds to perch:

This was a not totally successful attempt at a back-lit shot:

The ground was very boggy and wet but still with a soft pink covering of heather:

I think this is my favourite crested tit photo of the morning:

One day we had an early supper at the hotel and then got ourselves back into the minibus to visit another hide to watch wildlife after dark. Once we had arrived and settled in, peanuts and spreads of peanut butter were put out to bring the animals in close to the hide:

Almost immediately a pine marten arrived. This was one of this years cubs:

There are apparently eight badgers in a sett nearby and six of them turned up on the evening:

It turns out that badgers love peanut butter:

This gave me an opportunity to photograph their amazing claws:

And their very mobile noses:

A wood mouse also ventured out to see if the badgers had left it any peanuts:

At the end of the session, we got back into the minibus and had just set off when we saw a dead pine marten in the road:

Another iconic Highland species is the mountain hare and we spent a day in search of them, high in the Findhorn Valley:

This was a very remote area. The farm buildings that can just be seen above were in ruins

Mountain hares are bigger than rabbits but smaller than brown hares and with shorter ears. They also turn white in the winter, unlike their brown hare cousins.

After much searching amongst the heather, we managed to find two hares, both of which were still brown at this time of year:

Our guide had just got a new thermal imaging camera that talks to his phone, and this showed the hare up really clearly – but only once we’d already found it:

Another species we couldn’t go home without seeing was the red grouse. This female looked like she had white spectacles on:

And the male had only a hint of red on his eyelid at this time of year:

A photographic challenge we were set was to blur the water cascading down under the bridge at Carrbridge. I did manage to achieve this with a really slow shutter speed and large aperture. A polarising filter would also have helped but I’d left that back in the minibus:

We spent two windy days by the sea – one going round the Black Isle and the other along the Moray Coast.

Not only did the harbour at Burghead have a large fleet of fishing vessels in port, it also had a small group of eider ducks. Our guide nearly always got down as low as possible to take his photographs:

Although I remained standing to take this male eider:

There was also an inquisitive grey seal in the water:

I think the photo of this curlew at Cromarty is much improved by giving it the context of the just-harvested field:

There were lots of birds to watch at RSPB Udale Bay on the Black Isle. Unfortunately they were all just a bit too far away for my camera:

The views from the reserve stretched out to the oil rigs languishing in the Cromarty Firth:

A flight of mute swans low over the mudflats:

By the end of the photography week I was feeling pretty tired – we were usually leaving the hotel by 8am each morning and didn’t return until after dark. So we enjoyed taking life at a much slower pace when we stayed two nights in a seriously comfortable hotel near Peebles in the Borders on the way home:

But eventually we had to turn the car southwards and make the long journey back down through England. We had had a fantastic time but, as always, it was lovely to be home again and reunited with the dog. We both feel that we learnt a lot about photography over the course of the week, but now need to keep pushing on with putting it all into practice so that we don’t forget.

Autumn is great time of year for birds of prey around here and several have been displaying their hunting prowess this week.

The ringed kestrel has been patrolling the meadows since 2019 and here she is now with a mouse:

She has also caught several voles:

I took this photo through the kitchen window early one morning as I was making a cup of tea. The trail camera that is slap bang in front of her failed to take a single photo though – it does seem to be a bit unreliable:

The buzzard has been in the meadows this week but we’ve never seen it with any prey. I wonder if it eats what it has caught whilst still down on the ground rather than carrying it back up onto a perch?

A barn owl is hunting in the meadows most nights and it takes its prey back to various perches to eat:

But it was only when it landed on this gate, where the camera is quite close, that we noticed that it is a ringed bird:

John, the bird ringer, is very involved with barn owls in East Kent and tells me that there are many owl boxes locally where he rings the chicks, and this could well be one of his. He has suggested that we put a nest box up on a pole in the second meadow to see if this owl can be persuaded to roost or even breed here. This definitely sounds like a fun winter project and I will get onto it straight away.

We continue to see a lot of this partly leucistic jay:

It is a busy time of the year for jays as they collect and bury the acorns from the holm oaks. They are also always very enthusiastic bathers:

Juvenile herring gulls are still closely shadowing their parents to learn the ropes. The adult now has its winter grey speckling on its head

It was our grandson Kit’s second birthday recently and we were invited to a party at his home in Wye:

Kit’s toys were all joining in the birthday fun too:

Whilst we were at the party, a small group of red-legged partridge crossed their lawn and it was lucky that I had brought my proper camera along:

Amazingly, a great crested newt was then found trapped in a bucket that it had fallen into and couldn’t get out of. We had never seen one of these large and endangered newts before:

Co-incidentally, I had just bought two newt refuges to put in their hedgerows because I knew there was a population of great crested newts in the village and I wanted to see one. Therefore we were able to release the newt into the refuge to give it some safe shelter until dark

Due to enormous declines in range and abundance, the great crested newt is strictly protected by law, making it an offence to harm, capture or even disturb them and to damage their habitat. If we hadn’t been rescuing the newt from the bucket, presumably we shouldn’t have been handling it at all.

We had all five of our children and their partners staying this weekend and I noticed a fascinating David and Goliath moment in the corner of the conservatory whilst preparing it for lunch. The long-bodied cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides, is not native to the UK and can only survive here in our houses and sheds.

The cellar spider does spin a web but, if nothing lands in it, it can venture away to go off hunting for other spiders that are sitting on their own webs or lurking in a crevice.

Over in the wood, squirrels are collecting nuts:

Its unusual to see a nuthatch down at the ponds:

And a pair of bullfinch at a mini pond:

The tawny owls have already started to check out the tawny box in preparation for next year’s breeding season. But will they manage to beat back the squirrels this time?

And they still continue to regularly come to this pond to bathe even though it is no longer warm:

This week we visited another of East Kent’s zoos, Port Lympne Safari Park, run by the Aspinall Foundation. Here we saw this magnificent gorilla in its reassuringly enormous enclosure:

The Aspinall Foundation, which runs two zoos in East Kent, has sent over seventy zoo-bred gorillas back into the wild:

This scheme is controversial, with some people questioning if this is an effective conservation tool. I currently don’t know enough to take an informed stance in either camp but I find it all very interesting and will try to find out more.

The forecasted string of beautiful autumnal days has come and gone but the second meadow remains steadfastly uncut. The tractor once more stopped working and there has had to be another delay while expert help was called in.

The good news is that Dave had pretty much finished the first meadow before things went wrong:

Birds, as well, are interested to see what the cutting has to offer them:

The cutting has exposed a nest of german wasps, Vespula germanica, deep within an old rodent hole:

Whenever we have found wasp nests in the meadows before, they have been nests of the common wasp, Vespula vulgaris, so I was pleased to be able to add another species to the list. German wasps are quite plentiful in the south of England and they have surely been around here, but I’ve just never properly identified them before.

This very useful poster refreshed my memory of what the differences are between the common and the German wasp:

The most telling difference between the two species is that the common wasp has a black anchor shape on its face as shown by the photo below taken by a Dr. W. Stickling, who clearly has a much better camera than me:

Our german wasps in the rodent burrow don’t have an anchor on their faces:

Soil is being excavated from the hole, although they don’t have long before the cold will kill all of these wasps off, other than the newly-hatched queens who will fly off to find somewhere with a constant temperature to hibernate.

The annual cut is a fundamental part of meadow management, but it undeniably also causes immense collateral damage to the invertebrate and small mammal populations that live amongst the long vegetation. A benefit of the delay in the cutting of the second meadow has been that these species have all had a bit longer to complete their life cycles.

Wild carrot grows well here and by this time of year the flower heads have closed up to form a tight purse containing their seeds:

These purses are safe oases for all sorts of invertebrates and, if you gently prise the seed heads open, they can be found sheltering within:

There will be many more invertebrates living amongst and within the plant stems as well, and all of these will be wiped out when the meadows are cut. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable, if the meadows are to remain as flowery grassland. But because we want some of these invertebrates to survive, we leave at least a third of both meadows uncut on a rotational basis every year. Anthills and grass tussocks also develop in the uncut areas which are important micro-habitats and provide cover for reptiles and ground nesting birds. It’s all quite a delicate balance and who knows if we get it right, but every year we try.

Birds, too, have been enjoying what the long grasses still have to offer. Flocks of goldfinch rise and fall across the meadows as they feed on uncut thistle heads:

The kestrel has been busy catching great green bush-crickets, living amongst the uncut vegetation. This gallery of photos shows her eating three, but I have seen her with five in total. She has quite a taste for them:

These bush-crickets are large – this female we came across last year was about 7cm long:

The kestrel eats a surprising number of invertebrates – we have previously also seen her with bumblebees and dragonflies.

Another benefit of the delay in the cut is that Dave has had time to continue his excellent work in the pond:

It’s been years since this pond has been as clear of vegetation as this. It’s going to look great next year but I do worry that there is less protection for the frogs and newts from the herons.

The agricultural equipment supplier near Canterbury who services the tractor came to have a look at it and found that there was a big wodge of grass in the cutting deck that was stopping the blades rotating, something that was very quick and easy to fix. Dave was given advice on how to avoid this happening again, so we live and we learn.

With the tractor now sorted, work is once more underway although there is still a lot to do:

There have been some other interesting photos this week:

Winter is approaching and the badgers have been occupied with dragging fresh bedding into their sett underground:

One of this year’s sweet cubs continues to come out in the daylight:

Over the covid years, I threw myself into mothing, running the trap at least once a week and spending hours pouring over the field guides, trying to work out what I’d caught. Since then, I’ve scarcely run the trap at all, but decided to do so one night this week. I’d noticed that my computer’s AI seems pretty competent with moths and I wanted to give it a proper test out because it might save a lot of time.

Sixty-nine moths of thirteen species were in the trap by the morning and I did indeed find the AI really helpful at jogging my rusty memory. There were also a few species that I hadn’t seen before and the computer thought it knew what they were. Once I had checked everything in the book, I discovered that the computer was correct and that this is going to be really useful. I now hope to recommence full-scale mothing operations in 2025.

The delicate is a migrant moth and there were twenty-seven of them in the trap. The L-album wainscot likes damp coastal habitats and its over-wintering caterpillars feed on a variety of grasses

Other things also turn up in the trap sometimes. This is a tawny cockroach, one of our native species of cockroach that thankfully live outside and are not household pests:

Burnished brass moths are lovely little things and are often in the moth trap over the summer:

Frogs will be going into hibernation before too long – some of them in the mud at the bottom of the pond that Dave has now cleared – but this male was sitting on the garden steps one drizzly night when the dog went out for a last mooch before bed:

I do often include photos of sparrowhawks clenching their claws because I find it a comical thing for an otherwise quite scary bird to be doing. I was intrigued to see the buzzard, on the left below, doing the same thing this week:

A little robin was helping Dave cut the hedge up by the drive…

…and a beautiful young siskin was down by the wild pond:

A partially leucistic jay has been bathing in this tray most days:

And this is an unusual image of a crow:

My sister’s house in Berkshire is in the middle of farmland, with polytunnels all around her growing soft fruit. She has bats in her attic and red kites nesting in her trees, but she has never before had a polecat in her living room as she did this week:

I do hope that the cut of the meadows will now soon be completed. But for that to happen, we will need the weather to improve and dry the grasses. But good weather was definitely not what the BBC was forecasting for today:

Hurricane force winds from the north-east at 654 mph was a certainly a bit of a shock and the BBC obviously has a problem. But, in reality, today is calm and sunny and it definitely looks like a tractor day once the meadows have dried up a bit. It has all been a bit stressful this year but now we hope the end is in sight.

It has been quite wet but Dave has been alive to any opportunity to get out on the tractor and continue with the cut of the meadows:

The annual cut is a vital part of maintaining the land as grassland, but there is no doubt that it can be a catastrophic event for the small mammals and invertebrates that live amongst the tall grasses. Whilst Dave was still cutting, a fox came out into the open alongside him to search for voles.

There were a lot of rodents to find and the fox was burying them in shallow graves in the hope that other animals would not find them:

Magpies and crows were very interested in what was going on too. They were looking for food themselves but they also had their beady eyes on the fox – when it returns to its caches, it might find that they have been raided and the cupboards are bare.

Dave’s study looks out over the first meadow and we were both there when we spotted this buzzard flying in:

It then went down onto a new perch that we’ve just put up in the first meadow, surrounded by the cut grasses. As you can see, there is a camera trained on this perch, but it recorded nothing whatsoever of this very large bird sitting right in front of it. I am very unimpressed by that, but luckily we were watching from the house:

The kestrel has also been on the new perch, but she has found another way to avoid having her picture taken:

When I went through the other trail cameras, I saw that the buzzard had been on perches in the second meadow as well and had been pulling some dramatic moves:

The magpies and crows, self-appointed guardians of the meadows, still continue to keep this enormous bird of prey under close observation:

There is quite a lot of colour variation in buzzards and, looking back at my photos, this does seem to be the same bird that was with us throughout last winter.

It had been several months since a barn owl has appeared on the cameras, so I was very pleased to see one again this week:

Tawny owls have been around as well and this one ate a vole in front of a camera.

I’m so delighted that the meadows are providing food for all these birds of prey.

Watching the buzzard come down to the new perch wasn’t the only interesting thing that happened in Dave’s study this week. He was working on his tax return when a robin scuttled into the room as if it were a little mouse. The back door had been open but that is quite a long way from the study, so the whole thing was quite surprising and provided a most welcome distraction from the paperwork.

It is migration time out there and there are all sorts of warblers in our trees, hedgerows and appearing at the ponds.

Several stonechats have been seen on the perches or having a drink:

The Stonechat is a partial migrant – some stay in the UK for the winter whilst others migrate to Southern Europe or Northern Africa. This increases the chances of survival for at least some of the population should there be a migratory or winter catastrophe. But even the birds staying in the UK may move to more southerly parts of the country – for instance, Cumbrian-bred birds have apparently been proven to winter in Kent.

Back in the spring, I raised some sunflower seedlings to plant in our grandson’s garden so that he could watch them grow and be inspired. The seedlings that weren’t needed went into our allotment and are now putting on a very cheery autumnal show:

The sunflowers in the allotment are very popular with the bees, but a closer inspection showed that there were also many of these hyaline grass bugs, Liorhyssus hyalinus, on the flowers:

This next photo has been sent to me by our youngest daughter who is just back from holidaying in Mallorca, where she discovered this praying mantis, Mantis religiosa, on her sun lounger:

This iconic species is found throughout Europe and even on the Channel Islands, although not yet in mainland Britain. I wonder if, like the hyaline grass bug in the 1990s, it won’t be long before it gets itself across the Channel and finds that it quite likes it here.

I was very relieved to see all four badgers in this photo because it had been a while since I’ve seen more than three together and I was beginning to fear the worst:

For the last couple of mornings, one of the cubs has been coming out for a drink in the daylight:

I include this next photo even though its blurry because it is a good shot of their amazing claws:

If asked, I have always said that my favourite animal is the capybara, the World’s largest rodent. I find the sweet, gentle giant-ness of them very appealing, along with the fact that they live in family groups and only eat plants. But I had only ever experienced them from the other side of a fence at a zoo. This week, however, I booked myself onto a capybara experience at Wingham Wildlife Park near Canterbury.

Wingham Wildlife Park has a lot of interesting animals and we admired some of these on our way to the capybaras. Even though the chimpanzee enclosure was fantastically enormous, the animals chose to all cuddle up together on a single shelf:

And who doesn’t love a meerkat?

The Patagonian mara is another big South American rodent but nowhere near as large as a capybara

Coincidentally, capybaras have been in the news recently when one called Cinnamon escaped from her enclosure in a Shropshire zoo. Her adventures sparked nationwide, even global, interest before she was eventually recaptured unharmed and returned to her home.

There are four young capybaras at Wingham Wildlife Park and they are still by no means fully grown:

For half an hour I sat on a tree stump amongst the animals whilst the keeper gave out celery and beetroot treats and told me all about them.

It was all rather wonderful and I now have an even greater appreciation of this lovely species.

For the last few days, further progress on the cutting of the meadows has been stalled because we’ve been busy and the weather has been wet. However, things are looking up towards the end of the week and Thursday, Friday and Saturday are looking like possible tractor days. Will it be possible to have finished everything by close of play on Saturday? We will try our best to make that happen.

This week we attended a wildlife-friendly gardening event being held in association with Kent Wildlife Trust. We brought along some cork boards displaying a selection of our all-time favourite trail camera shots, capturing interesting animals and behaviours, which we hoped would inspire people to use trail cameras themselves and to record the wildlife that they will inevitably see.

Another stall at the open garden event was encouraging the people of Kent to set up Asian hornet lures and to report any sighings of this invasive species.

Here in East Kent we find ourselves on the front line in the fight to stop the Asian hornet from becoming established in the UK. It has already firmly ensconced itself in France and, as of 6th September, there have unfortunately been 50 UK sightings and 13 nests found here this year.

An extract from the UK rolling sightings tally for 2024 showing how Kent is very much in the forefront of this battle:

This bar chart of the 2023 nests found by county tells the same tale:

The Asian hornet preys on insects and is thought to represent a serious threat to our native pollinators, particularly bees and wasps.

Last November we were in the Champagne region of France to see the crane migration. Over the course of the week, our nature guide pointed out several Asian hornets flying around and he even found a nest five metres up in a tree:

On the stall at the open garden this week, they were recommending that we make up some hornet bait:

And pour it into a jam jar or similar with a wick to bring some of the bait up:

This bait will not pull hornets into the area that would not otherwise be there, but it should attract the interest of one that was casually passing by.

I have now prepared a Asian hornet lure and positioned it in the orchard with a trail camera on it:

Some of the liquid has dropped from the wick onto the table and butterflies have been appreciating it, but so far that is all:

Thankfully no Asian hornet has been spotted to date, but I did see this large hornet-mimic hoverfly, Volucella zonaria, around the flowering ivy:

Last Christmas, our daughter-in-law created us an art-installation-cum-wildlife-habitat out of roof tiles that were left over from the building of the new garage:

This structure has been quietly lurking amongst the grasses this summer and no doubt all sorts of things will now be relishing the heat and protection of the tiles:

We had actual evidence of that this week when we saw four lizards basking there:

There can be quite a colour variation in viviparous lizards. Back in 2019 we kept on seeing a really green one in the paddock:

As usual, autumn arrives along with a flurry of jobs now needing our attention. At the very top of the list is getting the meadows harvested before the grasses become too wet to cut properly:

Frustratingly, this job has been delayed because the tractor got some grass in its fuel tank and had to go off on a flat-bed truck in disgrace to be worked on. But it’s back now and, once it stops raining, this job is a top priority.

Meanwhile, I have been dealing with the wild parsnip areas with a mixture of digging up and mowing down. We have been controlling wild parsnip growth in the meadows for a few years now because, not only is it a terrible thug, it also causes photo-sensitive rashes on human skin .

Another item on the list is to remove two years worth of reedy growth from the wild pond, before the male frogs start burying themselves into the mud at the bottom to hibernate – I wouldn’t want to squash them.

Badgers have their own autumn jobs to do and there has been a lot of bedding being dragged backwards into the sett to prepare their burrows for winter:

I pruned the new hedgerow last winter and that has made a big difference. It has taken a long time for it to establish itself on our thin, dry soils but it is finally starting to look like a worthy hedge:

A small section of the meadow has already been cut and that has attracted the attention of the raptors:

The kestrel herself is a regular and she has been catching voles. But here she has a dragonfly

Sparrowhawks are seen throughout the year, not just at meadow-cutting time, and they often adopt this amusing relaxation position:

This week we met up at the wood with the county recorder for reptiles and amphibians – he wanted to assess its potential for snakes, particularly adders. We had never seen a snake in the wood before, so what were the chances that we would disturb a large and vigorous grass snake sunbathing in a glade whilst he was with us? Well, this is indeed what happened and I am ashamed to say that it gave me such a shock that all I did was shriek, but the recorder was able to see that it was an adult female and was about a metre long. He also immediately submitted a record!

The snake was just to the right of this tree, warming up in a patch of sunlight. I have put a camera there now because apparently they will sometimes return to favoured basking sites:

Once it had seen us, the snake removed itself at speed to the shelter of a dead hedge that we had created when we opened up the glade the winter before last:

We had previously thought about woodland management with birds, dormice, plants and butterflies in mind but we had never before considered things with a snake hat on. We came away from the day with several ideas to better help British reptiles.

Our only other recent sighting of a grass snake was in a pool in West Blean Woods near Canterbury in July 2021:

There has been another unusual visitor to the wood:

September’s dormouse monitoring tour around the nest boxes took an exhausting six hours yesterday but, as I trudged back to the car, it was difficult not to also feel completely exhilarated by the number of dormice that had been found.

Dormice live in low densities and it was therefore a fantastic result to find nineteen dormouse nests in the boxes this month. Some of the nests were empty but we did find eighteen dormice, including this little chap who had unfortunately lost his tail:

Most of the dormice found were adults and many were paired up in fully-constructed nests, presumably ready to start a family. There could well be numerous litters of young to process on the October tour and I am already mentally preparing myself for a very long day.

As soon as we set off around the meadows with the dog on Friday morning, it was apparent that something momentous was going on with red admirals:

Hundreds if not thousands of red admirals had flown across The Channel and arrived in the meadows overnight, and were now fluttering out of the hedgerows and long grasses wherever we went.

It was difficult to take photographs to demonstrate the scale of the irruption:

I did take a very large number of photos, and even tried to get a bit arty:

Red admiral butterflies are migratory and travel northwards from North Africa and Continental Europe as the spring and summer proceed. The species overwinters as adults, and nearly all found in Britain will have migrated here because they are mostly unable to survive our winters. There is recent evidence, however, to suggest that some are now successfully getting through the winter in the extreme south of England.

Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory, just up the coast, post their daily sightings of butterflies and I could see that they, too, had had a big arrival of red admirals,

Whilst I was admiring these admirable admirals, I couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen to them all, now that the summer was coming to an end and our unsurvivable winter was just around the corner. So I was very pleased to read that many do undertake a southerly migration back across The Channel before the end of autumn.

There were also quite a few painted ladies that had arrived along with the red admirals and these were the first painted ladies that we had seen all year:

In the sunshine of Saturday, we also saw our normal butterflies who must have been wondering what on earth was going on:

Both wasp spiders that I have been watching have now left their webs to build a cocoon somewhere close by, and we take that as our sign to commence cutting the meadows, mindful that there is a lot to do before the weather collapses into winter.

As always foxes, magpies, kestrels and many others are very interested to see if the cutting has thrown up any opportunities for them:

I spotted this large privet hawk-moth caterpillar clinging to Dave’s trousers as we were returning to the house one day:

They are the most amazing things. I was particularly taken with how the white slashes end with a series of spots:

Since Dave hadn’t been brushing up against any privet, we presumed that the caterpillar had wandered away from its larval food plant to look for somewhere to pupate. We decided that it was best to return it to some privet so that it could start its journey again, heading off where it wants to go

We have never found a privet hawk-moth caterpillar in the meadows before, but we often had the adults in the moth trap. It is the UK’s largest resident moth:

I also found this small purple-and-white caterpillar which is likely a lime-speck pug moth

Late summer is the time when slow worms ‘give birth’. I put this in commas because it is not the same as in mammals – slow worms incubate their eggs within their body and, once the eggs hatch, up to twelve young emerge from the female.

We haven’t seen any slow worm babies – or neonates as they are called – in the meadows yet, although I did find some in our daughter’s garden in the North Downs today:

Whilst we were looking under the reptile sampling squares in the meadows, hoping for neonate slow worms, we uncovered this vole. With that chestnutty colour and less rounded head shape, I believe that this is a bank vole rather than a short-tailed field vole:

We haven’t seen quite so much of the ringed kestrel this week, but her place has been taken by this sparrowhawk:

It’s always lovely to see sparrowhawks in flight:

They are magnificent birds, but I am less impressed with the sorry piles of feathers they leave in their wake:

Last week, a whinchat was seen in the meadows:

John the bird ringer has sent me a photo of a whinchat that he took recently at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory, which more clearly shows what a young whinchat is like:

Other birds on passage have been seen at the wood:

Our resident birds are appearing on the cameras as well. Adult bullfinch have been in the wood all summer but now, for the first time this year, here is one of their young:

This next photo is a joyous mix of blue tit, great tit, marsh tit and song thrush:

And a tawny owl still continues to bath at this pond, even though the nights are now much cooler:

My last photo for today is of another neonate – our lovely little granddaughter who was born yesterday:

I can’t wait to start teaching her about the wildlife in the meadows and the wood, but she’s perhaps a little young at the moment.

As I walked round the meadows this morning, the sky was alive with house martins and there was a distinct autumnal nip to the air. Torrential rain fell over the second half of the weekend and now only a few butterflies are stuttering about under a glowering sky. Evidence of the changing of the season is everywhere, drawing a line under the summer. But in many ways autumn represents a fresh new start for us, with some exciting new wildlife projects being planned, and I am looking forward to it.

A short walk from home is Hawkshill Freedown, a lovely and historic 13.5 acres that is now being managed for nature, although it was the site of Walmer Aerodrome during the First World War. From here aircraft were scrambled to protect friendly shipping in the English Channel.

By the time the Second World War broke out, a grassy runway was no longer suitable for planes and the area was used for radar and signal-jamming purposes instead. The M Balloon Unit of the RAF was also based there to drop propaganda leaflets over Europe. In February 1944 alone, over five million leaflets were released over Germany and France by 2,478 balloons despatched from Walmer.

After the wars, the land returned to agriculture but Walmer Parish Council was able to buy 13.5 acres of it in 1999 to ensure its existence as an open space for the enjoyment of the community.

These days it is being managed by a team of volunteers with very much the same approach as we have for our meadows – but they must face many more challenges than we do. It’s a much larger site with public access and a lot of dogs. I imagine it must also be difficult to get cut material offsite as well as watering newly-planted trees.

But, despite all these issues, Hawkshill was looking fabulous when we walked up there one day this week:

Dave has an old book ‘Records of Walmer’ which was published in 1890, three years before the tower was built. It includes a plan of the new church, showing a spire on top of the tower:

There was a lovely mix of flowering plants at Hawshill and there seemed to be much more colour there than in our meadows by late summer. Another difference is that over the years we have become very wary of the thuggish tendencies of ragwort and particularly wild parsnip, and we go to great lengths to ensure that neither of these plant species sets seed here.

We have an area of dense wild parsnip growth in the first meadow and it has been kept it cut short all year so that we can contain it and keep it under observation. Any parsnip outside this area has been pulled up:

The yellow-flowered parsnips – which, as well as being scarily good at reproducing themselves, can cause a photo sensitive rash on human skin – are growing thickly in this cut area:

There are too many parsnip plants to pull them all up in one go, but the plan is to try to reduce the size of the rectangle each year by pulling the parsnips around the circumference. The remaining plants will be cut before too long, well before they go to seed, with the arisings being deposited onto a tarpaulin and then straight into the green waste bins to further ensure no seed is spread. All this elaborate work may seem a bit extreme, but demonstrates how alarmed we are by wild parsnip!

The hedgerows and trees surrounding the meadows have now produced their fruit and seeds:

There is scarcely any fruit at all on the hawthorn this year and very few sloes. But guelder rose berries, blackberries, rose hips and holm oak acorns are plentiful. Each year is so very different.

The large amount of ivy that we have in our hedgerows has come into flower, offering a seasonal bonanza of pollen and nectar. In the sunshine, vast numbers of insects are flocking to it.

The life cycle of the ivy bee, Colletes hederae, revolves around capitalising on this late-summer bounty. There are thousands of these bees here in the meadows at the moment:

It’s not just the ivy bees – all sorts of other insects are drawn in by the ivy:

As we are patrolling the hedgerows we also noticed a jersey tiger moth…

An adult and last instar box bug…

…and several speckled bush-crickets with their super-long antennae:

We went out with torches at night and discovered that a different set of ivy-enthusiasts were to be found in the dark.

It was lovely to see such a wide variety of moths such as the angle shades, straw underwing and setaceous Hebrew character shown here:

But the most interesting thing of all on our trip out at night was to finally see some adult black vine weevils, Otiorhynchus sulcatus. A section of ivy near the house had loads of them:

A second wasp spider has been discovered in the meadows. It’s good to spot them because we will then ensure that the grasses aren’t cut in a wide circumference round the web to safeguard the overwintering cocoon. I have been calling by both webs every day to see what the large lady spiders have been catching in their webs. They are grasshopper specialists but I haven’t seen either of the spiders with one of these this year:

I wonder why they are not catching grasshoppers this year? Is it a web placement issue, or perhaps a bad year for grasshoppers and crickets? The wasp spider I was watching last year was incredibly successful in comparison to these two, and hapless invertebrates were pinging into her web right, left and centre. A large number of silken threads come out of her abdomen at the same time, meaning she can wrap up and immobilise her prey very rapidly indeed:

I have been noticing bats flying along the hedgerows when going out at dusk to put the peanuts down for the foxes and badgers. Our bat detector was dug out and readied for action:

We ventured out on another still evening to see if we could work out what species of bats were about:

It was exhilarating to both see the bat and now hear it as well, once the detector was tuned in to its correct wave frequency. We were hearing the bats at 45kHz which we think makes them common pipistrelles. We also heard a call briefly at 55kHz, so there could well be soprano pipistrelles flying as well.

I find bats so intriguing because they are so difficult to get to know. You only get the briefest of glimpses and I am not even completely sure what they look like up close. Here is a photo from Wiki Commons of a common pipistrelle that has unfortunately grounded:

We do have several bat boxes up around the property but have plans to get a few more up this winter:

Due to a housekeeping oversight, I found myself with quite a few slightly out-of-date eggs which I put out one evening along with the peanuts. Foxes love eggs and this one quickly started to take away as many as possible before the badgers turned up:

However, it hadn’t managed to get them all away before the badgers arrived. Foxes are very respectful of badgers and wait in the wings for the badgers to eat their fill. But the lure of the eggs was too much this time:

I love the way that the fox is almost tiptoeing in on bended legs in the hope that it won’t be noticed.

My final photo today is of a whinchat. This bird breeds in upland areas of northern and western Britain and briefly stopped at the meadows this week on its journey south to central and southern Africa for the winter.

This is a red-listed bird in the UK with its numbers having more than halved between 1995 and 2008, although the causes are unknown. I wish it every luck on its long journey.

There has been a lot of squirrel damage in the wood this year.

The bark is ripped off by the squirrels to get at the sweet sap in the phloem tissue just under the bark, but this means that the tree can no longer move food around. If the tree is ring-barked all the way round its trunk then it will inevitably die:

Even if it not completely ring-barked, the growth of the tree will still be impeded and the scars will allow access for pests and diseases:

The squirrels target beech, oak and hornbeam trees in our wood which are exactly the trees we particularly admire and would want to keep:

It is not fully understood why the squirrels damage trees like this although there are many theories. I am particularly persuaded by a study at Wytham Wood near Oxford where they discovered that it was the females and juveniles that stripped the bark at a time in early summer when they were depleted in calcium – the juveniles were growing fast and needed calcium for bone growth and the females were calcium-depleted after lactating. The sap of beech and oak trees, the trees they particularly target in our wood, is especially high in calcium.

As well as killing our trees, grey squirrels predate birds eggs and young, damage the dormouse and bird boxes and eat hazel and other tree nuts that would otherwise be feeding dormice.

There are several large raptor bird boxes up in the wood, hoping to attract tawny owls, barn owls and kestrels but squirrels nest in them all, rendering them unavailable for birds. We have a camera on one of the tawny owl boxes shown below. Tawnys did actually nest in this box in 2022 but, for the last two springs, both squirrels and owls have tried to nest here and unfortunately the squirrels have won out:

Squirrels have also competed with green woodpeckers for nesting sites in an old cherry tree which is covered in old woodpecker holes. Last year the squirrels drove the birds out:

This year the green woodpeckers returned and successfully reared three young in this hole, but the squirrels were not very far away, nesting in a different hole further up the tree:

Although we feed the birds in the wood, we are confident that the squirrels do not get this food – ‘Squirrelbuster’ feeders very effectively exclude squirrels and we have put trail cameras on the feeders to confirm this. However, the wood itself provides them with plenty of food:

Our wood is supporting a high density of squirrels and we would love their population to be reduced. There is a contraceptive being developed that solely targets grey squirrels, but it is still years away from being available to us. The only option at this time appears to be to shoot them and we understand that this is what many wood owners in our area do. One big question is: do we have what it takes to shoot squirrels and the answer is a resounding No. But another big question is: would we be able to commission a competent professional to humanely shoot our squirrels and, following the death of so many beautiful trees in our wood this summer, we are not sure that we know the answer to this yet.

After several years of training, this summer I was finally granted a dormouse disturbance licence by Natural England. This means that I am now able to monitor the dormice in the wood myself without the kindly eye of my trainer watching over me. I did the August tour of the boxes this week with Dave assisting.

Box 6 had an adult female, an adult male and four young:

We often find yellow-necked mice in the boxes but this month we found wood mice in two of the boxes for the first ever time. They are significantly smaller than the yellow-necks.

There was a large gypsy moth in one of the boxes

The moth that we usually find in the boxes is the copper underwing, a woodland specialist species that causes no harm. We found a few of these this month:

It has been a poor year for butterflies, but there were still plenty to be seen in the marjoram glade in the wood one sunny morning:

The warm weather has brought some lovely woodland birds down to the ponds to drink and bathe:

And I have been enjoying seeing some young birds on the cameras:

We have a cameras on a hole in the ground where a family of rabbits were living earlier this year. This hole must still smell interesting since it receives daily inspections from both foxes and badgers:

Over in the meadows, the ringed female kestrel has been hunting here so often that I have enough photos of her to fill a whole post.

Here she has caught a lizard:

And a great green bush cricket with its long green wings:

But I haven’t yet seen her eating a vole which would be her food of choice.

She does do some high-energy hovering….

…but she much prefers to sit in a tree or on one of our perches as she hunts. She does need to defend these perching posts from the crows and magpies who also like to use them:

The magpies are moulting now and look in a right state:

They are one of the birds enjoying the crop of blackberries now looking so wonderful on the brambles at this time of year:

Blackbirds are the other big blackberry consumers:

Owls have been putting in some ghostly appearances:

And sparrowhawks are ever active in the meadows:

A male sparrowhawk with what could be house sparrow prey…

…which was eaten on the gate:

I am pleased to say that two of this year’s three badger cubs are still going strong. They will have absolutely loved the day of rain we had on Saturday, bringing out the slugs, snails and worms:

Foxes have been keeping a low profile recently but I’m pleased to say that every one of them looks healthy for once. It’s not often that we are completely mange-free here:

This is the first time that we have seen a ploughman’s-spikenard in the meadows. This is a sturdy, short-lived perennial that grows on low-nutrient, calcareous soils. In day’s past this plant used to be rubbed on the skin to act as a cheap and cheerful aftershave for country folk – it does actually smell really quite nice:

Until recently there were three UK native species of cockroach that could survive our winters and lived outside. In the past few years, however, several other species have expanded their range northwards into southern England from Continental Europe. The species below is one of these newly-arrived species and might be Planuncus tingitanus senso lato although these new species are difficult to identify by photo alone. I have seen several of this particular cockroach species around the meadows this summer and have now sent my photos to the cockroach expert at the Natural History Museum. I await his comments:

I finish today with this magnificent wasp spider. The raindrops on her web on Saturday meant that Dave (always sharp-eyed and excellent as an invertebrate-spotter) noticed her amongst the grasses. She is a very large spider with a body length of 2cm, but is also well camouflaged and we had thought that perhaps we might not find one this summer:

She is a grasshopper specialist and I am looking forward to seeing what she gets up to for the next couple of weeks before she leaves her web in early September to build a cocoon structure for her eggs before dying. Once she has gone from her web, we will take that as our cue to start the annual cut of the meadows which we try to delay until as many invertebrates as possible have finished their life cycles.

My mother grew up in Burry Port in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, where her family had lived for generations. We often visited my grandparents there when I was a child and I now have a great affection for the place. Dave, the dog and I went off down memory lane last week when we stayed in Burry Port for a few days.

Even though so much time has passed since those childhood visits, I found the town largely unchanged. There is one enormous difference though – Carmarthen Bay power station, built at the harbour in 1947 and completely overshadowing the little town, was demolished in 1992. This is a huge improvement but, because it was such an iconic Burry Port sight, a part of me strangely misses it:

Looking across to Gower from Burry Port dunes:

My grandmother often told the story of her great-grandfather, John Williams, a vet in Burry Port in the early 19th century, who used to ride his white stallion across the estuary to the Gower at low tide to tend to the animals over there. When the tide is in, as it is in the photo above, this story seems pretty far fetched – but a bit of internet research reveals that there was indeed some sort of causeway between Burry Port and the Gower across the estuary in earlier days.

This photo was taken at Cefn Sidan beach at Pembrey at low tide, when it no longer seems impossible that a white stallion could be ridden over to the Gower:

The upper reaches of Burry Port beach is covered in black slag rocks, telling the tale of heavy industry in the area in days gone by:

There are no such rocks at Cefn Sidan beach at Pembrey, though, where glorious sands stretch as far as the eye can see. Other than a narrow, central, life-guarded section, the beach was mostly deserted even on a sunny weekend in August:

There were razor shells washed up on the beach, some of which were filled with the eggs of the netted dog whelk:

There were also some of these netted dog whelks themselves:

There were signs around the beach about the strandline beetle, Eurynebria complanata:

This large (20mm) black and sandy-coloured beetle hides under driftwood at the strandline by day but comes out at night to feed on sand hoppers and other invertebrates. It used to live on sandy beaches throughout the UK but hasn’t been seen in England since 2002 and is only now known to be on three beaches around Carmarthen Bay, one of them being Cefn Sidan

Another bit of invertebrate interest is the number of snails we saw in the vegetation both at Cefn Sidan and on the dunes at Burry Port:

Back in the 60s I remember visiting Kidwelly Castle with my grandfather, when we had to knock on the door of the caretaker’s house to get the key to let ourselves into the castle.

The castle is under the care of Cadw, the Welsh equivalent of English Heritage, and visiting it these days is a bit more official. The dog was allowed in though, so long as she remained at ground level:

We so enjoyed our time in Burry Port and found it an excellent low-pressure place to visit with the dog, even in the height of summer. It’s a very long way from the east coast of Kent, though – as most places are unfortunately

After our few days in Wales we made our way down to Dartmoor in Devon. The Landmark Trust saves imperilled old buildings from ruin and sympathetically restores them. It then rents these buildings out as holiday accommodation to raise funds for further rescue missions. They are now caring for about two hundred buildings and we were staying in one of these – an old chapel in an ancient hamlet at the very edge of the moor.

It was all very beautiful and historic, although did involve driving down some very narrow lanes with few passing spaces.

We love Dartmoor but hadn’t been there since March 2020, just as covid was taking its stranglehold on the World. There were then off-putting stories of it being completely overrun by holidaymakers during the Covid summers. But we have returned now to find it gloriously easy to get away from everyone once more and feel like you are in a truly wild space.

Back in the Bronze Age (2,300 to 800 BC), the climate on Dartmoor was milder than it is now and many people lived and farmed there. Their monuments can still be seen across the moor today.

One morning we visited Grimspound, a late Bronze Age settlement with 24 hut circles surrounded by a massive stone wall.

I had brought a trail camera with me on holiday and we were very charmed to see that it was a lovely hedgehog that bumbled up each night to eat the peanuts that I put down:

I’m always excited to see a hedgehog because we don’t get them at home unfortunately.

Ten years ago our plan was to move to Dartmoor, but instead we went in the opposite direction to the east coast of Kent where we have family. For many reasons, that was the right decision, but I really regret how far away we now live. However, now that we have returned to Dartmoor after our four year break and rediscovered its wonders, I hope that we will manage to get there every year once more.