Highlights from week 1 included a wasp beetle rescued from the conservatory, and a woodpigeon with a missing patch of feathers that made it really easy to spot. The swifts are here, but yet again the house martins that have regularly nested in the village for some years have not appeared (second year running - guess we've lost them, sadly).
Out for a run during week 2 I spotted a muntjac deer down the farm track ahead of me, emerging from a field of beans. It watched me getting closer before bounding off across the track and into the field on the other side. Very wet weather courtesy of Storm Miguel made for some rather soggy garden birds, and a large group of long-tailed tits have been passing through.
Week 3 saw an exciting find for me - a smooth newt, hiding under a plant pot in the greenhouse. It's the first newt I've found in the garden here, and it was an unusual golden-yellow colour. I've since found another one under a log in the log pile, this one the more usual brown colour. A hedgehog tackled a huge earthworm, images caught on the trailcam in the front garden. I also puzzled over the flower preference of bumblebees, and discovered that it's all to do with tongue length!
Another first for me in the final week - a white-letter hairstreak butterfly, that I spotted in a garden during our village Open Gardens afternoon. Then a few days later, one appeared in my own garden! The recent wet weather has resulted in some quite fabulous fungi in the log pile - oyster mushrooms, which I was very tempted to pick and eat (but didn't in the end and now they've been very nibbled by the slugs and snails). Out for a run I saw and heard a corn bunting, with it's jangling-set-of-keys song. Very nice to see this farmland bird, which is in general decline, like so many...
