Rainfall: 50.6mm

Temp High: 29.0^oC on 8th

Temp Low: 1.1^oC on 25th

Temp Average: 15.1^oC 

A common darter was flying around our pond today.

The wasp spider from earlier this week is now gone, but just beside where she was, there was another female wasp spider with another egg sac. She was still finishing off the anchoring around the egg sac, so I'll post a video of that.

At the top of the garden, there was yet another female wasp spider which seemed to have created a tiny, withered little egg sac. I'll take another look in a few days to see what that looks like.

That means that there were at least 6 wasp spiders in the garden this year (presuming that male spiders only mate with one female).

We have a big sandstone block at the corner of the garden and we found a small mud-filler hole - probably from a potter wasp.

Finally, here's a photo of a colourful rosebud gall.

We came across this dead animal in the woods while out for a run today. It's difficult to tell for sure, but I think it is/was a weasel.

There were a couple of willow warblers in our field maple today.

The female wasp spider in the front garden has moved another half metre and has created an egg sac. She's still huge and still catching grasshoppers. This year I will collect the egg sac as I'm interested to see the spiderlings balloon away on silk threads.

I'm really annoyed - I found a dead red swordgrass moth in one of my pupariums. This a new species for the garden, but I can't find a photograph of the caterpillar in my library. I must have collected the caterpillar, put it in the puparium thinking I would take a photo later, but it must have pupated before I had a chance. I can't remember anything that looked like a red swordgrass caterpillar. I took a photo today, but it is out of focus so I will take another when I get a chance.

This fully-grown elephant hawk-moth caterpillar was sitting in the middle of one of our garden paths. I checked him out and he didn't have any obvious injuries or marks that would suggest he was parasitized. I put him in one of my pupariums, but he stayed torpid and didn't accept any food either.

As is usual at this time of year, our hazel tree is full of squirrels, great spotted woodpeckers and spotted nutcrackers. Of these only the spotted nutcrackers are a rare sight at other times of the year.