We've been numbering our roman snails since July in an unscientific field experiment to see how much they move about and how long they live. Here are number 12 (our latest addition) and number 3 who has been a regular on our patio. Number 3 has a penchant for Christine's lilies and we caught him today making his way towards them again. Christine moved him to another pot but he wasn't having any of that and was on the move again in no time.

There were two very different dock bug instars on our mugwort plants today. The youngest one looks quite like a scorpion.

We harvested the first plums from our plum tree. Last year we didn't get any plums. This year looks like there's quite a lot on the tree. We just plucked off the low ones today for a plum crumble. Even so, that was 650g of plums and they were all undamaged.

Today we saw our 98th bird species from the house. There were two yellow wagtails down by the pond with several white wagtails (they don't get along and were constantly attacking each other).

Up until now we've assumed that goldfinches were the only birds that were destroying our scabious flowers. Here's proof that greenfinches are doing it as well.

I was searching for narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth caterpillars in our field scabious this morning and discovered something unexpected. This large egg sac would seem to be of a wasp spider - which I have never seen here. The size, shape and colouration are perfect, but sadly there was no adult female around. I strimmed the garden on Saturday, so I may have disturbed her. Now I need to convince Christine that it would be a good idea to bring this sac into the house so I can photograph whatever emerges.

We were speculating whether foxes had been digging holes in the garden and why. Maybe this brown puffball was what they were looking for? It's nearly a truffle.

We went for a walk in Friedrichstal in the afternoon and I found this spectacular vapourer moth caterpillar on a willow. They're extremely common and I've seen them many times in the UK, but this is the first I've seen in Germany.

We've been enthusing about all the interesting plants which obviously came in with our bird seeds. There was another plant in there that we hadn't mentioned up until now as we hadn't identified it. Today we realized it was one of the few plants we're not going to allow to grow in the garden. Despite all our bird seed bags proudly boasting that they are ambrosia-controlled, here are our ambrosia plants before we dug them up and disposed of them.

It was extremely warm today and as it was going to be warm and dry overnight, I put the moth trap out.

It wasn't a bad haul. There was at least one new species for the garden - this rather worn cloaked minor. There are some other species I have photos of which I'm having trouble identifying so there may be additional new species.

The house martins were accumulating again in our birch tree. There were probably around 200 of them (difficult to say for sure).

And a willow warbler was in the birch too a bit later in the day.

The comma collected as an egg back on the 18th July emerged today - almost exactly a month from egg to adult.

Our little patch of sunflowers and other plants growing from our old bird table patch is doing well. The sunflowers are beginning to open. Today we spotted a couple of barley stems growing in there too along with amaranth and black nightshade. The black nightshade could easily be mistaken for a tomato plant in this photo as you can't see that the 'tomatoes' are only 0.5cm across.

We had both willow warbler and chiffchaff around the garden today as well as a few goldfinches destroying our thistles. They started on our tallest thistle and then moved to our stunted cabbage thistles. It isn't clear why the cabbage thistles are stunted this year.

As usual, any nuts in our hazel tree are being polished off by various visitors. Today it was a young great spotted woodpecker.

Lastly, here's a gruesome photo of the chaffinch that we've seen for a few weeks now who drags one of his lifeless legs around. That looks sore! He's probably had bumblefoot at some stage and has pecked off his toes.

After a quiet few weeks on the insect front, today was quite interesting. There were a few of these brightly marked shield bugs around. I believe they are the 5th larval stage of Carpocoris sp.

We had a new hoverfly species too, Helophilus trivittatus.

Some of our ant nests are still active and this red ant nest was erupting. These are biters, so we kept well back.

I took lots of grasshopper and cricket photos today and I'll endeavour to ID them all, but here are two easy ones: another rufous grasshopper (easily identified by its white-tipped clubbed antennae) and the daddy of them all, a huge upland green bush-cricket.

Lastly, here's another photo of our garden eyebright as I wasn't happy with the one I took earlier this week.

This mazarine blue butterfly was taking a risk today, sitting on our shed wall close to the bird tables. I think he got away with it.

The migrant birds have started appearing, preparing for their return journey to Africa. There was a whinchat hunting down by the pond and in the early evening a lesser whitethroat was posing nicely in our hawthorn. The lesser whitethroat is usually a difficult one to photograph as they skulk in the bushes, but this one was out in the open for a long time, so there are lots of photos.

The goldfinches are still enjoying our thistles. Here's a photo of a youngster.

Two new species for the garden today. The first is a rufous grasshopper. I've been meaning to spend a bit more time looking at grasshoppers and crickets, but they so jumpy, I can't usually get a decent photo.

The second species is a plant, Eyebright. We've been trying to grow this in the garden since we got here, but we'd just about given up. Today we found two plants, the first of which seems quite established.

This great banded grayling was flying around the house today and joined myriad other butterflies and day flying moths including silver-washed and high brown fritillary, red admiral and meadow brown butterflies and small argent and sable, mint moth and shoulder stripe moths.

My comma caterpillar has now pupated - that's 22 days from egg to pupa!!! The pupa is almost as spectacular as the caterpillar.

It's extremely hot at the moment. Too hot to do much more than sit indoors. I had a quick session watching the birds, but the most interesting thing that happened was this sooty copper butterfly landing on some hazel leaves.

Here's a difficult bird to identify. This individual landed in our birch today and it looked so unusual I thought it was a really rare species. But it's not. It's a jay in really heavy moult (poor quality photo - taken through a window).

An adult male red-backed shrike and a fledgling were flying around the house today. I only got a photo of the adult.

A black redstart was anting in everyone's favourite anting spot outside one of our sheds. Here he is looking down to see where the ant nest holes were.

One of my mystery caterpillars collected from our hedge bedstraw emerged today. This is a purple bar. I'll go back and update the earlier diary entries with the photos of this caterpillar and update them.

It must be that time of year that the hazelnuts are worth eating. There were three nutcrackers in the garden today. They seemed more interested in the peanuts on our bird table. This photo is taken through a window as there was no way they were going to stick around if I attempted to open it to get a better shot.

One of our young red-backed shrikes was hunting in the grass today.

So, I finally had one of the caterpillars I'd collected emerge as an adult royal mantle moth. Previously all of the royal mantle caterpillars I've collected have pupated, but failed to emerge. This is only a partial success as this species is meant to overwinter as a pupa so this adult is probably not going to find a mate. Even if it did, any caterpillars are going to have a hard time finding enough foodplant and feeding up in time to pupate for overwintering.

The comma caterpillar is really feeding up quickly. It's now on its final instar.

A small flock of 8 mallards splashed down in the pond today. I don't think we've seen so many in the pond before. Here's a photo of 7 of them.

The comma caterpillar is now on its third instar and has developed its spikyness.

Perhaps more interesting than the caterpillar on these photos is the hop leaf. I've noticed those little yellow nodules before. These must be the features that give the leaf its unpleasant raspyness and presumably help it to climb.