Blackbird, damselfly and mason bees.

We have blackbirds nesting nearby and the male is often in our back garden looking for worms. 

Here he is tackling a large earthworm  which it took several minutes to subdue to fly off with, it looked like it was going to give up on a couple of occasions, but persevered

The large red damselflies have emerged from our pond, this one is resting on an ornament next to the pond.

The red mason bees are still busy making their nests in the 'bee hotel' 

Mason bees do not have pollen baskets like honey bees or bumble bees, instead they carry it on their body which you can see on the returning bee above.

Lots going on in our greenhouse. Things to eat, plants for the window boxes and also sunflowers which i would miss if we did not have at least a few each year. Good for the bees and birds too.

Great tit and sparrow families, damselflies and kestrel

The great tit family is still visiting the garden. The damselflies are still emerging from the pond and there is renewed egg laying taking place.


The male remains clasped to the neck of the female and they fly around in tandem. Probably to prevent another male from mating. The female settles on the pond weed and dips her tail into the water depositing the eggs a few at a time in various locations around the pond

Yesterday a family of sparrows spent a couple of hours on and around the flint wall looking for insects.
A close look at the beak indicated that they were juveniles and there appeared to be a male and a female.
As I stood out the front garden on Sunday, a kestrel flew through the narrow gap between our bungalow and our neighbours house before swooping back up and headed off towards the west.

I also noticed the first meadow brown butterfly in our garden.

Great tits, snails and damselflies

Raining hard today. An adult great tit was foraging in the climbing plants on the shed opposite the kitchen window. Before I could get my camera the great tit flew up into the tree. It sounded like the adult bird feeding its young.


Lots of slugs and snails about. This one was having a piggy back. I'm sure their must be some chinese moral there somewhere!


There were several damselflies hanging from the underside of the yellow flag leaves, sheltering from the rain.

Slowworm, damselflies, crow

A hot sunny day so I st up my laptop on the garden table to work. I noticed our cat hunting on the steps near the rockery. I assumed she was hunting a spider or some insect. After a while she came doen the steps with what I thought was a big earthworm in her mouth. It took a few seconds to realise that she had caught a slowworm. She dropped it at the bottom of the steps and I quickly grabbed the slowworm up to get it away from her. Our cat (Hera) frantically looked for the slowworm not realsing I had it. When she eventually lost interest I released the slowworm on the rockery.

It was a day of rescuing as I had to rescue two separate damselflies from our conservatory. Once hey enetered itsreally hardto get them out again. With these two I resorted to carefully catching them in my hands and releasing them outside.

For the second day in a row, a carrion crow brought dried bread and put it in the bird bath and then flew away. About 5 minutes later the crow would eturn to feed on the bread which was now very soft. The crow appears to be nesting about 2 hundred memtres away in trees on the other side of the valled road.