Rainfall: 15.7 mm

Temp High: 21.1^oC on 25th

Temp Low: -4.7^oC on 2nd

Temp Average: 7.9^oC

Yet again I saw a small yellow underwing moth in the garden and yet again after I rushed to get my camera it had gone and didn't come back.

I did manage to get another photo of a common groundhopper. These are definitely more common than my lack of previous records indicate.

I have new species of beetle and fly to add to our garden list, Selatosomus aeneus and St Marks Fly. The St Marks Fly is so named as it is meant to emerge around St Marks day, 25th April - so 3 days late but close enough.

One of the breeding kestrels briefly perched on our roof today.

Somehow we've managed to get Plantago media growing in the garden. This has appeared this year for the first time in various places in our lawns.

The bird migration still seems quiet. We had two serins in the garden today - these are short-distance migrants, but we see them outside of migration time too. I think this was a male and female. The female seemed tired and kept closing her eyes.

This goldfinch presented a perfect photo opportunity in the fresh green hawthorn.

When we had our house restored, we put up a number of house martin nests. We don't expect any house martins to nest with us immediately, but the nests are being used. A pair of black redstarts are nesting on top of the boxes.

I managed to get a photo of the breeding pair of kestrels.

We had another migrant in the garden today, a whinchat.

I spotted a new moth for the garden, a Small Yellow Underwing. We'd seen this moth in our meadow a few years ago, but not in the garden. I didn't manage to get a good photo unfortunately - I've been trying to find it again, but unfortunately, it hasn't been back.

I spotted a bird flying through the valley today. I haven't been able to identify it and didn't get very good photographs. I did get a good view - it was a big raptor, mostly white with black wing tips and a black stripe on the tail. I guess this will remain a mystery.

I missed the peak of the bird migration as we were back in the UK. As the weather has been a bit cooler, we probably didn't miss much.

Today we had a few migrants, a Wryneck and a Common Redstart. There are lots of singing blackcaps too.

We saw three kestrels today - there seemed to be a breeding pair and another male trying his luck.

Two more of my tau emperor moths emerged today - two females. I put them outside to see if any males were atttracted, but there were no takers. They didn't move all day so I left them outside in the evening and they were gone in the morning.

The first of my Tau Emperor moths from the caterpillars of last year emerged today. This is a male.

While out for a run this morning, we nearly stepped on this large fire salamander (probably female). Christine's hand is shown for scale. We reckon she was about 16cm long. She was in the middle of the path and we saw two squashed ones elsewhere, so we carefully moved her to the side of the path as she was extremely torpid and vulnerable - it was cold, barely 4^oC.

An Engrailed moth landed on our window this evening. There used to be two similar species (Engrailed and Small Engrailed) but is now considered as one. The single species has taken the latin name from the Small Engrailed, which I'd not recorded before, so this is kind-of a new garden species.

It's rare that I get to put my moth trap our this early in the year, but it's been warm and dry so last night was perfect. After I'd checked the trap, I'd counted 50 moths with 11 species. There were no new species though. I did spot this impressively large spider underneath our new house shingles. This is probably a Eratigena atrica female - but it's impossible to tell without a closer look - and I'd got as close as I wanted to.

Later in the afternoon, while I was moving my moth trap to keep it out of the hot sunshine, I spotted two more moths that were squashed on the patio. Evidently I'd been clomping around the trap this morning and didn't see them. I hate killing insects even by accident, but the upside is that I got two more moths to practise my dissections on. One was a pug (Eupithesia family) and both were badly worn - so were impossible to ID from visual inspection. My dissections paid off - with the pug being a Brindled Pug, a new species for the garden. The other was a Grey Birch moth - not a new species, but it was the 13th species for last night.

There were two sparrowhawks flying around the valley today.

A walk around our orchard yielded this fine Red Poplar Beetle.

While we were sitting in our garden, I spotted this small Common Groundhopper crawling across a rock. I've only seen this species a couple of times before and only in the last two years. They're quite well camouflaged - so I've probably overlooked them in the past.

There were a lot of these Thames door snails on the dry stone wall beside the house this evening. They're eating lichen off the stones - so these can stay and are welcome.