Ever since we moved here, Christine has tried to determine which species of St John's wort we have in the garden. All the plants in and around the garden exhibit characteristics of Hypericum maculatum and Hypericum perforatum. They hybridize, but we'd expect to see some of the pure species around if these were hybrids. Today we had a good look in the local area and found both H.maculatum and H.perforatum growing close to each other only a short distance from the house. We took leaves from both to show the difference.

I was pleased to see these two heath fritillaries today.

I took some more photographs of the unidentified caterpillars we found on bedstraw earlier this month. I'm pretty certain that the first one is a common carpet. The second one looks like one of the pugs - there are about 50 species of pug - all very similar - but knowing the foodplant will help once the adult emerges. The photo here shows the size difference of this caterpillar against a fully-grown hummingbird hawk-moth caterpillar.

This great tit was anting outside our shed this morning. We know the ants there are particularly vicious having been bitten a few times ourselves. The behaviour of this individual was weird. He seemed to be picking up the ants and shoving them under his wings. You could see him flinching when they were biting.

Our cabbage thistles aren't far away from flowering. The unopened flowers are quite spectacular.

A forest cockroach was running around our patio doors. All the literature says that they are not a household pest but I really don't want to find these inside the house. Anyway, he showed no interest in coming in the house and flew off.

It rained last night and the flowers were not quite as busy today. Even so, I've got a few more photos of hoverflies (no new ones) and a median wasp who'd caught one and was devouring it.

The rain brought out a few roman snails - including these two lovebirds.

I'm finishing off with a photo of a young blue tit. There are lots of fledglings around at the moment.

There were a lot of new species for the garden today. A new longhorn beetle, Rutpela maculata, three flies, Sericomyia silentis, Sicus ferrugineus and Dasysyrphus tricinctus and a common green capsid. All of these were on our knapweeds and scabious flowers. These have turned out to be the easiest way of recording new species - let them come to us!

Also new today was a common froghopper.

This has been a fantastic year for black-veined white butterflies. Today we had a mating pair on our hedge.

It was the hottest day of the year so far.

We found four more caterpillars on the bedstraw today, three geometrids, which I can't identify while they're so small, and another hummingbird hawkmoth.

There were several new species for the garden. This pair of Leptopterna dolabrata, seemed to be in a post-coital embrace.

The garden was a real knocking-shop today. Here's a pair of Pachytodes cerambyciformis on one of our scabious flowers and these bronze shield bugs were 'at it' on our perennial cornflower.

This fruit fly, Tephritis conura, was sitting on one of our cabbage thistles.

I got all excited about a couple of visitors to our knapweeds. Unfortunately these are species we've seen before, Anthrax anthrax and Hemipenthes maura - just never on flowers.

I'm finishing off with a photo of one of the most common dayflying moths we see in the garden, a small argent and sable. This is a geometrid and the larval foodplants are heath and hedge bedstraw, so it would be a nice circular posting if this was the adult for the caterpillars mentioned at the start. Unfortunately, the caterpillars don't look right to me.

A rare morning post today. I wanted to check the quality of these photos as soon as I took them so I thought I'd also post them here at the same time. I may add more later today.

Anyway, the first photo is a female wolfspider with spiderlings on her back. I've not been lucky enough to see this before.

Secondly, here are two different colour forms of hummingbird hawk-moth caterpillars on bedstraw. Nearly every year, we bring a bit of bedstraw into the house as it smells so nice. Each time, without fail, we get several hummingbird hawk-moth caterpillars. This is despite the species being unable to survive the winters here. These are always the offspring of migrants.

** Update - we spent all day gardening so there wasn't much else to report except for a snake fly, Xanthostigma xanthostigma which we found sitting on our front door. This is another aphid eater so is welcome.

I had a close look at the St John's Wort in the garden. It seems to have characteristics of Hypericum perforatum and H. maculatum, so it could be a hybrid. We have found both plants on the hill above the garden.

One reason why it got its name may be that it flowers around St John's Day on 24th June, which is also traditionally the last day of the asparagus harvest here, giving the asparagus a chance to recover before next year.

Early this morning, there were a lot of Nemophora degeerella longhorn moths lekking over the field maple at the back of the house and more over the privet at the front of the house.

A couple of grey wagtails were hunting over the pond.

Like most days, a number of red squirrels visited the bird feeders. These mostly have black colouring, but this one was very red.

I found another green mountain grasshopper in our thistle garden. If this is the same one I photographed 10 days or so ago, he's grown incredibly quickly and looks close to adulthood.

I mentioned last year that we usually get a single visit from a green sandpiper sometime over the summer. I saw this one fly across the pond and rushed to get my camera. It came back over the pond, but I was too slow and this was the best photo I could manage. I stupidly gave up after that only to see five green sandpipers suddenly fly back over the pond towards Freudenstadt.

Just before I gave up with the green sandpipers, I did get this photo of a goldfinch who appears to be collecting spider's webs for nesting perhaps?

Lastly, a really nice metallic wasp was flying around the house. There are too many similar species for me to ID this one beyond its family, Chrysidinae. A beautiful insect but with a very unpleasant lifestyle.

The nice weather had brought out a lot of butterflies and our scabious and knapweeds are a big hit. Here is our first high brown fritillary of the year.

Another beautiful, sunny day.

This common lizard was basking on our garden gate.

This moth was sitting on our house in the sunshine and it had me puzzled for a bit. It is a dusky peacock which I've had in the moth trap before. The only photos I got of it before are of the underside, so this picture will go up on the species list.

The apple blossom that featured heavily in our diary at the beginning of May has now produced a fine set of protoapples.

I took an hour to watch the birds - something I haven't done for a while as there was nothing really happening. There are a lot of swifts screeching around the valley at the moment. This photo isn't in focus - but they're difficult to photograph.

This blue tit was basking in the sun. He looks ragged - he's probably recovering from bringing up some young'uns.

There were a lot of black-veined white butterflies around today. Here's one on scabious.

Lastly, a photo of a honeybee that was drinking in our half dried up bird bath.

The Dame's Violet has done really well this year. It had a wonderful fragrance. I drew the dissection in late afternoon and various reference books say it is only fragrant from evening onwards, so that fits. 

It was quite a nice day today. We went for a walk in Klosterreichenbach early in the morning and then spent the rest of the day observing the garden between household chores.

We had a new beetle for the garden, Leiopus nebulosus, a longhorn beetle. He seemed to have chosen to sit on the back of our house as he was quite well camouflaged on there.

Sitting above the beetle was this Nemophora degeerella, by coincidence, a longhorn moth - although this one only had one long 'horn' (antenna).

The scabious and knapweed in our garden is flowering and attracting loads of insects including this bee beetle. I tried to take a photo of the hoverflies dabbing the pollen on the scabious - but this is the best I could manage.

We were pleased to see this female Large Scabious Mining Bee, Andrena hattorfiana, on the scabious - with its pink pollen sacks.

Here's another new bee for the garden, Nomada hirtipes, a parasite of a different mining bee to the above, Andrena bucephala (the big-headed mining bee - presumably so called due to its big head rather than its attitude). We've yet to see that one in the garden, but it'll be worth looking out for.

Lastly, we had our first Colorado beetle in the garden. We'd previously seen one down towards the Forbach.

The Field Scabious is flourishing this year. Our plants in the garden come in a range of pinky purples. As soon as the seeds form, in past years, we have seen goldfinches descend on the flower heads destroying the plant. That's okay, as the birds are welcome too. For now, though, we have a wonderful display in the front garden to enjoy. The Wood Scabious, which also grows here, appears much later and hasn't flowered yet.

We went for a walk to our upper meadow. The cows haven't been here yet and the grass has got really high. This played havoc with my hayfever.

There were a couple of interesting fungi on the path up to the meadow. Firstly, a common stinkhorn announced its presence long before was could see it. This really is horrible to smell and its colour is similar to the one that Australia used to print the warnings on cigarette packets - it having been voted the most horrible colour in existence.

We also saw this Fringed Haycap, Panaeolus sphinctrinus - a dung feeder.

On the walk back, we spotted this poplar leaf beetle, Chrysomela populi, not surprisingly close to the large poplar tree.

The Common Bistort is doing extremely well this year. There are large swathes of it all along the valley down to Baiersbronn and even the ones in our garden are quite good. I had a look at the root of one. It really is shaped like a snake - which is why the German name contains Snake.

It seems like the weather has been terrible for most of June. Today was the first real sight of sun and I finally got a chance to see what was flying in the garden. Apart from a few fledging great tits, blue tits, blackbirds and black redstarts, there are very few birds in the garden right now. Our feeders don't have to be replenished most days and when they do that is because a lot of red squirrels are eating everything.

We had two new moth species for the garden today, a Common Heath and a Dichrorampha petiverella. The former was already on our website as we'd seen it up on the Schliffkopf, but today was the first sighting in our garden. The latter really requires genital dissection to be absolutely certain of the species, but knowing the available foodplants here, I'm fairly confident about the ID.

We saw our first small pearl bordered fritillary of the year as well.

This year has seen a major infestation of garden chafers. Today, we spotted that there were a lot in our raspberry patch and they've skeletonized a large part of it.

I've included some photos of a mountain grasshopper nymph, a shield bug (which appears to have a parasitoid egg on its back) and a beetle which I'll try to identify when I have time.

This Greater Celandine is growing up against the house wall - which is what it tends to do according to my plant ID book! It is poisonous and the bright orange sap that comes out when the plant is damaged certainly looks potent.

We were really pleased to see the Perennial Cornflower in the garden. We have a couple of plants but this one has produced loads of flowering heads this year. I dissected one flower - it is quite a spectacular thing.

The weather was finally warm enough to spend some time in the garden.

I've been watching for butterflies as I want to see the purple-edged copper which I haven't seen since 2013. I'd also like to see a mother shipton moth which I also haven't seen since 2013. No luck today.

I did see a family of blue tits which I hope are ours from our nest box. Impossible to say for sure of course. Here are some photos of one of the parents and one of the two fledglings.

I spent most of the afternoon wandering around the garden and recording some new and old species for our garden list. I've included a selection of photos.

I also found another newly emerged small elephant hawk-moth who was pumping his wings up.

Later on we were treated to a male red-backed shrike grooming himself in the sunshine close to the house.

We have much more Ribwort Plantain than Broadleaf Plantain in the garden. The latter is pretty much confined to the trodden paths and driveway.

I drew the Ribwort as we have so much of it!