It was a lovely warm day today and the forecast is for a heatwave. Despite this, the temperature last night fell below 10^oC and my moth trapping was a bit disappointing.

We've been noticing a brightly-coloured insect buzzing around recently and I managed to get a photo today. This is a Ruby-tailed Wasp, although the exact species can't be determined without dissection. 

We've got a good display of Creeping Jenny in the garden at the moment. I was extra-careful with strimming the grass so it was not too damaged.

We're seeing a lot of fledglings at the bird table at the moment, mainly great tits, greenfinches and jays. The jays in particular are interesting to watch as the adults are bringing the youngsters to the table, showing them what to do and then they fly to a nearby tree and keep watch.

Here's a photo of a juvenile jay with a particularly manky-looking peanut. I'm sure I can see a maggot in there!

I took a couple of experimental photos of the waxing moon this evening. The exposure was surprisingly difficult due to the movement of the moon. I could quite clearly see the moon moving across the frame, so a reasonably fast shutter speed was required. This one was 1/60s at f8.0 and ISO320. The image is not as sharp as I would have liked. I'll have to try again when the disc is bigger and there is therefore more light.

It's been raining quite a lot today. Both male and female red-backed shrikes are visiting the garden regularly. As they're nearer now, the photos are better.

We had an unexpected visitor to the valley this morning. This Osprey is either lost or just passing through. Christine saw it down by the fish ponds as well and it circled the pond here a few times before heading off south.

I could only manage a few photos through a very dirty window, so they're not great. It would have been nice to be able to read the rings on his/her legs to see where he/she came from. I think I can make out a '7' on one of my photos.

Once a rain front had passed through overnight, it stayed drier for a while and we were able to sit in the garden. We heard a strange call and saw this fieldfare land in the birch tree. It posed for some nice photos.

Later, we went for a walk in the woods and saw this bright orange fungus, probably Scutellinia cejpii. On the way back, we saw a sand lizard basking on the dry stone wall. We've only previously seen sand lizards squashed in the road at the same location. I'd like to get a photo of a live one in its breeding colours next spring.

Later the rain started again. It seems hard to believe that the calendar summer started today.

Up on the top floor, trying to take some nice photos of the birds, we came across a small moth Borkhausenia minutella. This moth is extinct in the UK and it is speculated that was due to intensive farming techniques so it's possibly a nice indicator here of a more natural environment.

We were also surprised to see a fox walk through the garden in broad daylight. It usually comes at night to fetch the sunflower seeds under the bird table.

While trimming the privet hedge, Peter nearly snipped what looked like a twig. It turned out to be this interesting geometrid, a Brindled Beauty, which does a very good job of camouflaging itself. 

On a run this morning, I noticed that the Goat's beard or Bride's feathers (Aruncus dioicus) has started flowering down the valley.

We decided to have a look at the helleborine on our meadow this afternoon. It had been raining all week, but there was a break in the weather briefly. Unfortunately, when we got there, we discovered that the helleborine had been eaten off completely - most probably a deer.  It's a great shame we only had one plant. 

The bracken is growing ever higher, so once we get some drier weather, we will have to start cutting it back.

The emperor moth caterpillars have now all pupated. It is earlier than we expected but I have heard from the children in Baiersbronn that theirs have also started to pupate.

Our dwarf buddleia is slowly producing leaves and we found a tiny caterpillar on one of them. On closer inspection, it is probably an early instar Mullein moth caterpillar - the group is difficult to identify in the caterpillar stage. I found a later instar on the same buddleia last year but it was parasitized. I hope I've got this one early enough to prevent that this year. I haven't recorded a mullein moth in the garden so if I can get this one through, I'll have a new record.

We have recently seen a large number of black-veined whites - more so far than the whole of last year. It seems to be a good year for them.

The weather has been terrible since last weekend and there really was nothing happening in the garden. Today it finally stopped raining and was actually a bit warmer.

We hadn't seen the red-backed shrikes since the 4th of June, so we were really pleased to see the male today.

We went up to our meadow to see how the helleborine was doing. It hasn't flowered yet, but we were surprised to see that the foxgloves, winged broom and honeysuckle are all flowering.

We saw a few forester moths flying both up on the meadow and in the garden.

When walking up to the meadow, I mentioned that I really wanted to get a photo of the brown hare we've seen around. I didn't really expect to get one, but in mid afternoon when I was looking out of the window, I saw him walking along the forest road. I'm quite happy with the photos.

I've had less luck with my other photographic challenge: to get a decent photo of the swifts, swallows and house martins as they splash into the pond. They do this every day that the sun is shining, but it is really difficult to frame and focus on the water and to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze their movement. I'm getting better at it and I'll post pictures up until the point I get one I'm happy with. I'm nowhere near that yet as you can see.

In the late afternoon, I was pulling up some grasses in the garden when I came across I really nice micro moth. This was Incurvaria praelatella, which I don't think has been recorded in the Schwarzwald before.

Another balmy day.

While sitting on the patio reading our flower books, we had a visit from a very confused hoverfly.

In the afternoon, similar to yesterday, I spent a long time waiting to photograph some interesting birds. Once again there was little - except today we had a group of five Buzzards instead of Ravens. I only managed to get a photo with two in frame.

In the late afternoon, we went up the Finkenberg to see if there were any butterflies flying up there, as there were none in our garden. We saw a few Heath Fritillaries and some Black-veined Whites.

I'd been meaning to take a picture of our snowball tree - which is really spectacular at the moment.

On the way up the hill we took photos of the flowering Brooklime, Woodruff, Yellow Pimpernel and Meadow Vetchling.

We were chased back home by an approaching thunderstorm.

Despite the weather forecasts, there was a huge thunderstorm overnight and it rained heavily. We got up at 3am to move the moth trap closer to the house and then I got up again at 5am to record the moths.

Although there were over 40 species in the trap, I only had two new species for the garden. It was unusual to have a Nemophora degeerella in the trap as these are mainly day-flying moths. This enabled me to get a few specimen photos against a grey card.

It was very warm again today and I took some photos of a basking common lizard.

In the late afternoon I saw a very strange-looking insect on our dining room wall. This turned out to be a lacewing: Drepanepteryx phalaenoides.

It was the hottest day of the year so far - well over 30^oC in the shade.

I spent the evening out in the garden trying to take photos of any interesting birds. The only interesting thing happening though was four noisy ravens flying over - presumably a family group as they're not known for their sociability.

Although we could see thunder clouds bubbling up over Freudenstadt, it stayed dry. The overnight forecast was also dry so I put the moth trap out.

It was another public holiday in Germany today and for once the weather was really nice.

I spent some time in the garden trying to perfect my camera technique for capturing fast-moving birds in flight - with very limited success.

A small family of long-tailed tits visited the garden briefly and I managed to get a photo of one of the juveniles. There were at least three juveniles in the group - so it looks like they've had a successful brood.

The kingfisher visited the pond again and I managed to get a photo of it returning to the jetty with its catch.

The kingfisher returned to the pond today for the first time since December 27th and seemed to be catching fish quite easily.

Last night I had the moth trap out again. The temperature fell to 7^oC, so it wasn't as good as I expected, but even so, there were two new species for the garden.

There were also two fierce-looking spiders around the trap, which I'll try to identify.