It was a nice warm day today - it got to 22.8^oC.

There were lots of insects flying. I have a number of beetles to identify and I recorded a new fly: Anthomyia pluvialis.

Spring is here and 'love' is in the air. I spotted a wryneck in our willow and took a photo. When I checked it out on my computer I could see that there were two wrynecks. The one I saw flew up into the woods to the west of us - so these are probably the same ones that I heard calling to each other in April. I'm now fairly convinced that they're nesting up there so we hope they bring their baby wrynecks to our garden later this year. We've specially cultivated huge nests of their favourite ants.

Two roman snails were also engaged in marital relations under one of our hedges.

Our pond plants suffered last summer from the low rainfall which meant that the pond level stayed really low. The winter has filled the pond up properly but the levels are now much higher than when we put the plants in so some have struggled to get back to the surface. But today our dwarf water lilies have hit the surface and last week we saw the first leaves of water crowfoot which have now begun to flower.

Our toad tadpoles have all hatched are are swimming about across the whole pond. We didn't get any frogspawn this year.

In the evening, this male blackcap was singing at full volume from our hazel tree.

The male red-backed shrike was joined today by a female.

Inside the house, we had three bee moths including the weird-looking one in the photos (which was in the process of inflating their wings - so a recent emergence). This means that these three probably pupated inside the house somewhere having spent their larval stage in a bee or wasp nest somewhere close by. We didn't really notice any bee/wasp nests inside the house last year, so this is a bit of a mystery to be honest - especially as the moths were all found on the ground floor.