The day started really well when I saw a beautiful male Whinchat up on our triangle of land. He allowed me to get quite close, so I could get some nice photos. Later on, he sat briefly in our hawthorn tree quite close to the house, but I could only get a photo through a window which wasn't as good as the earlier ones.

A spotted flycatcher perched on one of our sheds and allowed me to take some nice photos.

I've been trying to master the technique of photographing birds in flight against a background rather than the empty sky. This is surprisingly difficult as the auto-focus wants to focus on the background rather than the bird. I got this nice shot of a red kite today which shows that this technique is worth the effort.

It was hot today and a jay was taking a bath in the pond. Here's a picture after he came out of the water.

Just when it seemed the day couldn't get any better, we noticed a butterfly flying around the buddleia. We initially thought it was a Camberwell Beauty, but on closer examination it turned out to be a Great Banded Grayling, a new record for the garden.

There were a lot of flies flying today and the birds were picking them from the air.

A male blackcap spent some time around the hawthorn tree and there were more warblers around. This one is slightly different to the one on Monday as it has an olive green back and a pinkish breast. It was eating angelica seeds.

As the evening closed in, we noticed the house martins congregating on one of the conifers near the Bärenschlössle. They must be getting ready to migrate. I counted over 60 birds in this photo.

The light was perfect today and I finally managed to nail some photos of the swallows diving into the pond.

After yesterday's diary entry, it hailed really heavily. The cows all congregated under the few trees available to them.

Today, I saw a blackbird eating apples in our apple tree.

There's been an unusual warbler around too. I think it might be an Icterine Warbler or a Melodious Warbler, but it's probably a juvenile and difficult to ID for certain.

I spent a lot of time photographing birds today.

Today was all about numbers: yesterday's solitary house martin was joined by about 30 others today. I even saw some swifts and swallows in the group - so they haven't left yet after all. We had 3 nuthatches at the bird table at one time and there was a confrontation on the pond when two kingfishers found themselves in the same territory.

As the weather began to change, I noticed a number of black birds circling over the forest to the North West. Luckily I had a 1.4x extender on my camera and I managed to get some photos of 5 black storks and a red kite.

High drama and Jays save the day

I got up early and spent a couple of hours watching the birds. It was all a bit boring really, just the usual crowd of great tits, jays etc.

Things changed suddenly and there were warning calls from birds from all along the valley. This was too widespread to have been trigger by a cat.

Before I had a chance to grab my camera, a large bird swept into the garden a few metres in front of me and all the small birds scattered. I wasn't sure what I'd seen as it all happened so quickly. The warning calls continued and the bird table and nearby trees stayed empty. Finally I saw a kerfuffle in the trees further down the valley and managed to take a photo of a jay chasing off this sparrowhawk and thereby earning his peanuts for the day.

The only other thing of note today: I saw one solitary house martin over the pond. It seems the others have now left. We haven't seen swifts and swallows since the 12th August, so they've probably left too.

We haven't seen many red squirrels since the first year we got here. We cleared a nest from one of our sheds and I don't think they forgave us.

Anyway, it seems they're back. This nice youngster appears to be the same one that runs across our patio and annoys our cat. Here he's having a good scratch.

Another weird visitor today. A green sandpiper.

The cows left our land today and moved over to the other side of the Bärenschlössle park. They have done a good job of the grass in our back garden! Let's hope the horseflies go with them.

I thought I'd got some photos of a spotted flycatcher today as this bird was behaving like one. On closer examination of the photos, I'm really not sure and I'll have to do some more research to see if I can ID this one.

** Update ** I'm pretty sure this is a female Whinchat. Nice!

It was really mild overnight so I had the moth trap out. I've got some micro moth photos which I need to try to ID when I have time as I'm pretty sure they're new records.

Also in the trap was a fresh convolvulus hawk-moth.

On the wall beside the trap was this impressive long-horn beetle: Saperda carcharias. The larvae of this species bore into the trunks of poplar and are a pest in poplar plantations. Here, they just provide another food source for the woodpeckers.

I took a picture of the pond to show how low the water level is at the moment.

The female blackcap came to eat the raspberries in daylight, so I got a couple of photos.

Lastly, I managed to get some photos of a juvenile white wagtail splashing around in the pond. The wagtails are really enjoying the cows and hop about under their feet or eat flies off their backs.

The kingfisher has continued to come to the pond despite the presence of the cows and despite the fact that the water level is continuing to fall. It made a rare visit to our side which enabled me to get a closer photo.

We've had a female blackcap eating the raspberries in the garden most days this week - always in the late evening when the light is fading making it difficult to photograph.

I did catch this white wagtail with an enormous grasshopper. It didn't seem to know what to do with such a large insect and sat in the tree with it for several minutes.

A young common redstart has also been visiting our patio all week and I finally managed to photograph it.

In the afternoon, we had a new family of red-backed shrikes in the garden, 2 adults and 2 juveniles. The two juveniles looked newly-fledged so these couldn't be the same ones from a couple of weeks ago.

In the morning we went to the entrance of the Dorothea mine to do a quick survey of the plants and insects. It was a bit disappointing to be honest.

I got some photos of the mine entrance but there wasn't much else of note.

On the way back home, I took some photos of the Sequoia growing beside the fishponds and we saw wild carrot nearby too - a first for the valley. I also took an interesting photo of some spume in the river.

Last night, a small herd of cattle were dropped off in the valley. These are instead of the travelling flock of sheep we normally get. Unfortunately, they've brought a plague of hungry horse-flies with them. We had six in the house at one stage.

We spent some time upstairs, away from the flies, watching the birds including several red-backed shrikes catching flies from the air. Hopefully they're catching some horse-flies too.

Late in the day I took some photos of what I thought was a treecreeper. Once I'd downloaded them, I realised we had a new species for the garden; a Lesser Whitethroat.

I had another go at photographing the swifts, swallows and house martins drinking from the pond. The light was poor, so out of 300 attempts, I only saved 3 images and even those aren't up to much. Here's one that's close to what I'm after - it's just a shame you can't see the bird!