Rainfall: 138.9 mm

Temp High: 25.5^oC on 6th

Temp Low: -3.9^oC on 24th

Temp Average: 7.3^oC

The bird migration continues. Today we had our first (and I think earliest) red-backed shrike. This handsome male was calling from the top of one of our willows.

I didn't see any more whinchats today, but our first house martins of the year were flying over the house most of the day today.

Once again, the bird cherry has been providing a nice backdrop for bird photos - today it was blackcaps.

The willow looks pretty good too - siskins were collecting/eating the fluff from the catkins.

It looks like the bird migration has finally started, about a week later than normal. It was a lot warmer today and we had at least two whinchats hunting around the house. I spent several hours photographing birds so there's a lot of photos today. The bird cherry blossom seems to have survived the frosts and blizzards and it still looks very picturesque.

This evening, we found another Idaea inquinata moth in our bathroom. This was a different form to yesterday's - so it's nice to have examples of both. 

I thought we'd recorded a new species of moth today. This Idaea inquinata was in our bathroom. Its English name is Rusty Wave, but the German name is far more useful: Heu Zwergspanner which roughly translates as Hay dwarf looper. This gives a clue as to where this came from and why it was in the house - we had a delivery this week of a new bird box and it was packed in hay. I noticed we'd already recorded this species in the garden back in June 2018, so it is just as likely to have come from some of Christine dried herbs.

I put it outside, but it's unlikely to survive the cold snap we're having at the moment.

It was so cold last night that there was an ice spike in our bird bath.

I took a few days off work as the next few days is when the big spring bird migration usually happens. Unfortunately, the last few days have been extremely cold and today there were blizzards. I'm not expecting to see anything this year as the forecasts are bad too.

We did see a manky pine marten in the garden today. We watched as he visited all the places in the garden where we'd previously found soil, rocks and wood piles dug out and destroyed. At least that mystery is solved.

Black redstarts don't usually tolerate each other, but these two were happily sharing the peanut feeder (which they are having to use as it is too cold for insects).

The brambling that I mentioned earlier this month is still with us. It doesn't look like he's going to bother migrating this year - he's just going to stuff his face with our sunflowers instead.

It was really stormy last night and unfortunately, the front fell off of our Schwegler birdbox. There were several blue tit eggs in there - we won't be buying Schwegler bird boxes again. I'd already repaired this box once and had to install some mesh over the bottom to stop woodpeckers pecking through the incredibly ineffectual concrete that the bottom of these boxes are made from.

I recorded two new beetle species in the garden today: Chrysolina coerulans and Cassida sanguinolenta.

A couple of grey wagtails visited the garden today. I was a bit disappointed with the photo to be honest (this was taken through particularly distorting window glass).

Bramblings have usually departed by now, but we have a solitary male who is still with us. I originally thought he might be sick, but I now think he is just fat and lazy.

A couple of siskins were drinking from our pond today.

Following on from yesterday, another photo of a great tit - this one was fluttering her wings, presumably trying to attract a mate.

Great tits don't get a lot of attention in our diary. Here's a photo of a very disapproving individual on our fence.

The population of snails in our pond has reduced, but there are some different species now. Here's a poor photo of a great pond snail floating upside down (see its flat pointed horns).

It's been extremely warm for the past few days so I ran my moth trap for the first time for over a year.

There was nothing unusual in the trap, but this female palmate newt was sitting on the patio.

Our first common redstart of the year arrived today.

After our nightly amphibian patrol, we took a look in our pond and found this enormous frog. It looks unusual, so we're not 100% certain of the ID.

When we went in the house afterwards, this orange-striped stonefly was sitting on the door. Now we have a pond, we're going to be seeing more of this sort of insect.