A grey wagtail was down by the pond today.

On our Sunday run, we saw this really nice example of octopus fungus. Unfortunately, it was behind an electric fence so I couldn't get very near and iPhone cameras are crap.

Yet another new plant has sprung up under the bird table. This looks to be chichory.

The thornapple we picked yesterday has cracked open some more so we can now see the seeds.

The female vapourer moth from earlier in the month was still moving around for a week or so after she finished laying eggs, but she has now expired. Here's a final photo with the full batch of eggs. There are 212 eggs in total!!

There were at least 10 chiffchaffs in our bird cherry today. They seemed to be finding something to eat on the leaves.

One of our thornapples cracked open today so we picked it and stored it and removed all the other plants we could find so we're not overrun next year. We'll plant the seeds in our poison garden.

We went for a run and saw this pale tussock moth caterpillar on bilberry. It uses its black stripes as a defence mechanism. That's the blackest black you're ever likely to see.

It was mild enough to put the moth trap out last night. There was a reasonable number of species including a new one for the garden, an autumnal rustic. I've never seen one of these before, even in the UK, despite them being reasonably common.

This broad-bordered yellow underwing had me puzzled - it had red underwings. Unfortunately, I only saw this when it was too dark to photograph.

Christine spotted an angle shades moth in the front garden too - not a new species, but one I hadn't photographed in Germany up until now.

There was a hornet in the trap too.

In a last ditch attempt to get our vapourer moth knocked-up, we put her outside on the north side of the house while we went for a run. When Christine got back, there was a male vapourer in the box with the female. He'd obviously finished his business and was off to find his next conquest.

Only a few minutes later, the female began laying eggs - she spent the most of the afternoon pumping them out. I'll put up some video of that soon.

An upland green bush cricket was sitting in one of our window boxes late this afternoon.

My vapourer moth emerged today and I was lucky - it was a female. This meant I could use her to try to attract a male to the garden and get a new species (as she was actually collected from Friedrichstal I couldn't count her as a garden species).

We put her outside all day and overnight, but no males came. I'll put up some video of her soon which shows her pumping out pheromones.

A few of the autumn birds were around the house today including a treecreeper and a firecrest.

A kestrel has been flying around the valley for the last few days.

This green shield bug nymph was sitting in our flower bed.

We took some photos of our bird seed plants today. A couple of the black nightshade berries are ripe so we picked them and placed them in our poisonous plant section.

We're trying to time the picking of our thornapples so they don't spread uncontrollably. They don't quite look ready yet.

This strange grass is also growing in the patch. After looking through our books I think it is probably cockspur.

We emptied and cleaned our bird boxes today. Here's a photo of the blue tit nesting material we pulled out. The great tit nest box was quite similar. We can see some of Christine's hair and some of out wool carpet sheddings which we put out for the birds in spring. See our videos page (Projects -> Videos) to experience the process.

The vapourer caterpillar I collected a couple of weeks ago has now pupated. I'm hoping it is going to be a female as that should attract some males to the garden. This isn't a species I've recorded in the garden yet.

Also, the green geometrid caterpillar I collected from our bird cherry back on the 22nd of May has finally pupated. That was such a long larval stage, it has me quite perplexed as to its species. I don't even know if it is likely to overwinter as a pupa or it will emerge this year.

The kingfisher is appearing regularly beside the pond at the moment. He seems to have a very short tail, so he's probably in moult.