I waited patiently for the fritillary from yesterday to reappear, but all I got were high brown fritillaries.

While I was waiting, this sweat fly, Lasioglossum zonulum, kept landing on my sweaty legs and hands.

A European paper wasp was removing bits of our garden fence. The light was really good today, so I got this amazing photo.

While dead-heading one of our roses, I spotted this red assassin bug, so took extra care. This species has a really nasty sting - you can see the stabby thing quite clearly.

Three serins visited the garden late in the afternoon. We haven't recorded this species since July 2018. The photo is terrible as I had my macro lens on the camera.

A final tour of the garden allowed me to see our first wasp spider of the year, a male. I collected 8 egg sacs last year, but I never saw any signs that anything hatched out of them. They were outside in an open container, so they may have dispersed without me noticing. And the final record of the day was this flax tortrix hiding in the undergrowth.

I've always been told that hoverflies are a gardener's friend as they eat aphids. Well that isn't always true. The larvae of this Merodon equestris hoverfly burrow through daffodil bulbs. We've always had real problems growing daffodils - so maybe this is the reason. Pretty though - and a new species record for the garden.

I got this photo of the upperside of a fritillary butterfly today (on our wonderful sweet william flowers). This looks like a dark green fritillary - which I've never recorded before in the garden. I won't accept this as a new record until I get a photo of the underside of the wings as the upperside can easily be confused with the high brown fritillary - which is relatively common here.

I spotted this largish slow worm in our potato bed today just after I watered.

There are some very anxious parents about at the moment. This fledgling black redstart is the source of their concern.

The caterpillar that I collected at the end of May, emerged today. The ID of Paraswammerdamia nebulella was correct!

The day started with a nice, fresh double-striped pug moth inside the house. I suspect this came in as a caterpillar on some cut flowers.

There was a bit of light drizzle this morning and I spotted this tiny toadlet on the patio. We went down to check the road and there were hundreds of toadlets migrating across. They were streaming down the side of our dry stone wall and spreading out once they got to the end. Presumably these all came from the Baerenschlossle pond. Later on in the day in rained really heavily and they started streaming in the other way over our patio (towards our pond and garden).

Before the heavy rain started, I had a walk around the garden and found this really small grass snake. I think it was dead, but they are quite good at acting, so I'm not 100% sure.

Finally, another new bumblebee species, Bombus sylvestris was enjoying our chive flowers.

Finally some nice weather - and the pond is alive with aerial insects. As well as the numerous broad-bodied chasers, we had this Emperor dragonfly patrolling the pond today.

It was a bit too hot to be honest so we sat in the shade under our spruce and this very large alate (winged) black spruce bark aphid, Cinara piceae, landed on my leg. They live at the top of their host tree so I've never seen one before. It was windy today so it may have been blown off the tree or maybe they're just at the dispersal stage. The picture is of the aphid on my finger BTW - my leg doesn't look like that!

This metallic beetle was climbing up our house wall today. This is Callidium violaceum, the larvae of which live under the bark of mainly conifers.

We had a brief excursion down to Freiburg and also visited Ihringen to see the birds. However, the most interesting thing I saw was this southern six spot burnet moth.

My tau emperor caterpillars are growing fast. Even though they all hatched at roughly the same time, they're all now at different instars.

More rain today, so I only got out into the garden for a short time. Just enough to get a photo of this small bee on a scabious flower. This is Lasioglossum leucozonium.

A few new garden species today, despite the rain. Also, another newly emerged broad-bodied chaser.

In the evening I went to the site that I'd found willowherb hawk-moth caterpillars in previous years to see if there were any adults. I was lucky to find this one. What a fantastic moth!

There was a short time between the torrential downpours where the sun came out and I took a walk around the garden. This four spotted chaser was sitting in our rockery, looking remarkably fresh so probably newly emerged after the rain (like me).

The bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) was looking very wet and dejected. But a wall brown butterfly was still able to take to the air, albeit until the rain started again.

Another new species of moth for the garden today. This Wood Carpet moth was hiding in the leaves of one of our hop plants.

There are quite a few excuviae around our pond at the moment. This one had the recently emerged adult broad-bodied chaser with it.

The sunny weather has brought out the butterflies too although I always seem to be without my camera when an interesting one appears. Today, all I got a photo of was this burnet companion moth - which is probably the most common day flying moth in our garden at the moment.

As I was writing the above, a huge thunderstorm passed overhead with torrential rain. Afterwards, I thought I'd take another walk around the garden with my camera - so a load more photos! New bumblebee, cranefly and beetle species, lots of the metallic micro moths that fly at this time of year and a slender brindle moth caterpillar on grass just beside the house.