This heron had caught a big rodent in the pond this morning. I can't quite make out what the rodent is, but you can see it was big. By the time I got to my camera, the heron had already drowned the hapless creature. And then it was down in one.

Another hot day and lots of photos.

Starting off with this yellow-tailed bumblebee which was crawling around as it doesn't seem to have properly developed wings. There is a virus that can make this happen.

There are a few insect species that I will have to ID later.

Our "squirrel-proof" birdfeeder isn't working!!

We had a couple of high-brown fritilleries flying around today as well as lots of skippers.

There was a rather drab caterpillar on one of our red campions. This is a campion moth which feeds on the deveoping seeds of campions. One of the other heads had developed this green berry. This is the normal development, but we don't normally see this green stage.

We sat on the terrace for a while and there were lots of these really annoying little flies which kept landing on us and, presumably, taking up our sweat.

We had a zebra spider on the garden table today in place of the black jumping spider we had a few days ago.

Up in the cottage garden, I spotted this strange insect while I was on slug patrol. It is Cixius cunicularius which is in the cicada family.

I found a new caterpillar today on honeysuckle. I think it is a grey chi moth, but I suspect it is parasitized, so I may never know for sure.

As dusk was falling, this scallop shell moth was fluttering around all the areas where we'd watered.

It was hot and sunny today so there were lots of butterflies including this small pearl-bordered fritillary.

I thought I saw a drone flying over the valley, but I used the binoculars and realised we had only our second visit from a white stork.

Our mock orange is flowering nicely this year - last year we had a single flower. Anyway, while I was sniffing the flowers I noticed I wasn't alone. This clearwing moth was nectaring. This is also only the second time we've seen this species, Synanthedon cephiformis, a highly endangered species apparently.

Christine is drying some bedstraw and she picked this bug off of one of the plants. I'm not sure what is going on here. Maybe those are parasitoids?

Lastly, a photo of a fly I'll try to identify later.

There are quite a lot of black-veined white butterflies around at the moment. These two were having 'matrimonial thoughts'.

Here are some photos of male and female Stenurella melanura beetles. Not a new species for the garden, but pretty nonetheless.

Lastly, a couple of photos of a horse-tail that is coming up in our garden. We've never had horse-tails before, so this clearly came in with the new soil in our garden. We'll have to keep that under control, but we've decided to let this one grow as they're interesting herbally.

On our nightly slug patrol, I spotted this 4cm behemoth. It is Carabus coriaceus which coincidentally feeds on slugs and snails amongst other things.

This jumping spider was running around our garden table today and was very interested in what we were doing. I'll try to identify the species soon.

I'm feeding up three caterpillars at the moment: the knotgrass and the geometrid found under the bird cherry from the 3rd June and a new green one I found on a hazel in our hedge (which I should be able to ID but can't - I thought it was one of the Orthosia family but I can't find a match). The geometrid is big enough now to ID - I'm pretty sure it is a Blood-vein moth.

I've got a few photos of some beetles and bugs which I'll ID soon.

And lastly, this beautiful caterpillar was speeding over one of the rocks in our garden looking for a pupation site. This is a four-spotted footman moth.

There are lots of butterflies around this year. In particular, we're seeing lots of small tortoiseshells. Today however, we had a heath fritillary which is always an honour.

We saw this caterpillar on willow while out for a run today. It looks like this is a scare dagger moth, but they're not normally associated with willow. I wish I'd collected it, they are indeed scarce.

I've got some photos of a bug and a beetle which I'll identify later. I got some nice photos of this Cauchas fibulella moth on a speedwell flower, which is the larval foodplant too.

Our beetle basements have both got resident common lizards.

I couldn't resist a photo of this peony which we transplanted to our cottage garden from a bed near the house which has now been removed.

With all the garden building work now over, we're finding some new plant species popping up in the lawn, like this Hoary cress.

Lastly, this shieldbug nymph was crawling across my shorts today. It required all my skills as a contortionist to get this photo.

I found a couple of caterpillars in the garden today. The first one is a knotgrass moth on honeysuckle. I've found this caterpillar in the garden in the past, but later instars which have always been parasitized. This is an early instar so I'm hoping that I can breed it through to the adult stage. The second caterpillar landed on Christine while we were under our bird cherry. It's a first instar geometrid and is therefore difficult to ID. I'll wait until it is a bit bigger, but in the meantime, it seems to be happy eating bird-cherry.

I found this dead hawthorn shieldbug in one of our vegetable beds. This is a new species for the garden even if it isn't in a particularly healthy condition.

In the late afternoon, I went for a run and was lucky enough to see this wood tiger moth beside the road.

One of the male red-backed shrikes that have been here for the past couple of weeks has hooked-up. It looks like they might be nesting in our hawthorn. Here are some photos of the lucky lad and a few photo of the female collecting nesting material.