Rainfall: 136.9 mm

Temp High: 32.1^oC on 1st

Temp Low: 4.8^oC on 10th

Temp Average: 15.7^oC

In between downpours, I managed to get a few circuits of the garden and was rewarded with two new species of moth, a Latin moth and a Dichrorampha flavidorsana micro moth. The Latin moth was extremely jumpy and the resulting photo was taken from a long way away as I chased it around the garden.

The speckled wood pupa I collected on the 18th, emerged today.

The red assassin bugs continue to hatch and there's now a mess of legs and stabby things. I released them back in the area I found the eggs so they can tuck in to the aphids.

The rain drops made this flower look really attractive.

This Deraeocoris ruber bug was sitting on a leaf. We found a small toadlet, which wasn't much bigger than the toad wave we had a couple of months ago.

The eggs I collected on the 18th have hatched. I'm fairly certain my ID was correct and these are red assassin bugs. I will release them back up where I found them so they can get rid of some of the harmful bugs in our vegetable beds.

I was trimming back some of the shrubs in our boundary hedge today. When emptying the trimmings onto our compost pile I spotted this pupa on the underside of a hazel leaf. It's probably a speckled wood butterfly pupa, but I've boxed it up and will hopefully find out for sure soon enough. Hazel is not the larval food plant of speckled woods, but I guess they just crawl up the nearest shrub to pupate.

Our buddleia had finally flowered (it's taken a couple of years!). Today this very worn fritillary butterly visited. This had me reaching for my ID books. I'm recording it as a high brown fritillary, but it's a weird one.

There are still lots of insects, so more photos of those today.

The snail shell was very small, probably only about 3mm across.

And to cap off the day, I've included a photo of one of our water lilies. These have been really good this year and have been flowering continuously for a couple of months.

A revolting patch of slime mould, Fuligo septica, has formed beside our old maple tree stump.

There were lots of insects around today too. I've included a few photos of those. A few of those are new records for the garden. The spider fly was jumping around with its much larger spider prey. I've recorded the bumblebee as Bombus sp - it was weird looking and behaving strangely (not flying and sticking to the underside of the flowers). The yellow patches might be the remains of a full stripe, but something about this made me think it wasn't one of the usual species - but in reality it is probably just an older individual with an unusual wear pattern.

While strimming earlier in the week, I uncovered a patch of puff balls. The strimmer cut one of them in half.

We found a caterpillar on one of the flowers in our farmer's garden. It's one of the pug moths, but impossible to identify to species level at this stage. I'll try to breed it through.

There has been a lot of activity around our bird feeders even through all the building work. This goldfinch was sunning his preen gland. And the serins are back. We last recorded a serin back in July 2018. I've no idea why they haven't seen them for 7 seven years.

I found some strange insect eggs on the underside of a St John's wort leaf. I suspect that they're red assassin bug eggs, but I've collected them to find out for sure.

Despite the efforts of the slugs and snails earlier in the year, our garden is looking quite respectable at the moment.

After a morning of gardening, we both took time to wander about enjoying the results of our labour.

Two southern hawker dragonflies were newly emerged on bur reed stems in the pond.

While I was sitting on one of our garden benches, I noticed this small fruit fly eyeing me with his bright blue eyes. This is a new species for the garden, Acanthiophilus helianthi.

Just opposite the bench, this knot grass moth caterpillar was munching on a red clover.

Finally, back at the pond, a Dewick's Plusia moth was going from flower to flower. I've only previously recorded this moth once before, back in September 2012 just shortly after we moved to Germany.

It was a much cooler day today and there was a lot less going on in the garden. Just three photos; a new cranefly species, Tipula fascipennis, a photo of our first Alpine newt eft and a new shield bug, Enoplops scapha.

I've been seeing some very small brown bee flies recently but haven't managed to get a photo before today. This one landed for long enough for me to get a photo which allowed me to ID this as Bombylius minor.

Another new species of hoverfly for the garden was this Paragus haemorrhous.

The red admiral caterpillar I collected a couple of weeks back emerged today. That's a 10 day pupation period!!

Another new species of moth was sitting in the climbing bramble over one of our arches. This is Cydia fagiglandana. It's got no connection with bramble - so it was probably just hiding out the day.

I've recorded Eurygaster testudinaria bug in the garden before, but this one was a much duller colour.

Lastly, we saw several of these wasps gathering mud from our pond. This is an invasive species, Sceliphron curvatum, also known as the Asian Mud Dauber Wasp. It was first recorded in Europe in 1979 and has since become widespread. It doesn't appear to be a problem though. It isn't aggressive or a major pest.

Along with the numerous peacock, brimstone and high brown fritillary butterflies, there are are lot of small and large whites. I spotted a small white laying eggs on one of our plants.

This Ant Damsel Bug is a new species for me - it was on nettle. I've probably seen this before and just thought it was an ant.

We see a lot of Volucella pellucens flies every year. This is the first one we've seen this year.

I'm continuing my search for a dark green fritillary, but I'm still only getting high brown fritillaries.

I did see a new beetle species and a new moth species today though - a larch ladybird and a Mompha raschkiella respectively. The M.raschkiella was particularly pleasing as it was on our rosebay willowherb, which is its sole larval food plant.

I was doing a bit of weeding in the garden when I suddenly saw that my arms were covered with blood. Well it actually wasn't blood. I'd been handling some tansy leaves and hadn't realised that there was a major infestation with Crimson Tansy Aphids. Lots had fallen onto the thyme in the path which explains the first photo.