| 2024 | 2025 |
| << July 2025 | August 2025 | September 2025 >> |
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1st: Colour Bird's Foot Trefoil and Purple Loosestrife - both having good years on our land - we look forward to the Loosestrife spreading round all the ponds and the Trefoil finding its way into Swallow and Goat fields.   |
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2nd: Not looking their best Butterflies don't live long, some a few days, most just a few weeks. And they get start to show signs of wear and tear quite quickly.     |
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3rd: 5th Delmhies Puppy Party So proud and so grateful to all our dogs and their amazing owners. 
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4th: New plants We crouched in the shelf of Stonechat pond this morning, where, if we had enough rain, there would be water! As it is, parts of it are now smothered in vegetation, amongst which we spied two totally new species: Water Pepper and Water Purslane. Both very pretty and, as the names suggest, plants found in damp places. As well as these two, we also saw Greater bird's foot trefoil, young Grey willow saplings, Prostrate knapweed, Marsh cudweed and White clover. And to think, just a few months ago, this was all bare earth!!!   |
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5th: Banks and scrapes Despite the lack of rain, our banks and scrapes have filled up with a wide variety of vegetation. We have found upwards of 20 new plant species growing in them in the last few weeks, along with many existing plants that now exist in much larger numbers: scarlet pimpernel and white clover being two major examples. The photos don't really do them justice. 
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6th: Feed Me, Feed Me Not the best photos, but the action needs no explanation. Just love how many swallows we have this year!! Meanwhile, elsewhere, we are trying to reclaim the garden a bit - which includes a major tidy of the greenhouse as well as all the gravel areas, now that a lot of plants have finished flowering and spreading their seeds!!     |
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7th: Gulls For ages, we have been meaning to move a camera nearer to Chaser Pond to get some close-ups of the gulls. They are now regular visitors and at times we count upwards of 30/40 of them at once. Some weeks they are quieter than others but this week they have started to visit in large numbers again. We love having them. We 'think' we have Herring, Lesser and Greater Black-backed, the majority of which are youngsters. At the moment we think most that visit our pond are the first two. They are doing a grand job of 'fertilising' the banks of Chaser Pond and hopefully next spring this will really help it start to green up. We also hope the gulls hang around. They started visiting our land at the end of June although had been around most of the spring on the land next door. It would be great if they became all-year round visitors. They will nest on roofs in the absence of cliffs apparently! Many gulls are now on either the red and amber lists in terms of their conservation status - thinking back to our childhoods this is something we never would have guessed would occur!     |
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8th: Wiley At Wildside An amazing visit today to Wiley At Wildside with Becky - a once flat three acre field that is now the most extraordinary garden of many levels. Highly recommend a visit. And we had a fab drive through Dartmoor as well. 
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9th: Trail Cams Sometimes we get a lot of trail cam videos of waving grass - and we do mean 'A Lot'!! But the cards we collected this morning from the last 24 hours gave us some fab shots of foxes, gulls, hedgehogs and a couple of lovely young blackbirds. Some times all those hours of trailing through waving grass footage can be worth it!! |
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10th: Red and Green Love grasshoppers: these two, a Meadow and a Common Green we found posing beautifully side by side on the morning walk. They are very abundant on our land just now - they remind Jack of her childhood and especially visits to the Malvern Hills where along with Jon (her brother) she would spend ages tracking them and then trying to catch them in her hands. And then below we have a 7 spot Ladybird and a False Ladybird - the first we see a fair few of, the later is a another new species. False ladybirds are a type of Handsome Fungus beetle that live and feed in rotten wood, including fungoid bark. We also need to mention the huge excitement of having fox cubs on our land. We caught them on a trail cam in Fruit Field last night. Sadly the video is really foggy but we can see what we think are two cubs and a mum - the cubs bounding along as only youngsters so. Fingers crossed we get better footage in the next few days.    |
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11th: Birds The Bird Feeding Station continues to be a riot of birds: it's fascinating how some species come and go, and others are constant. House sparrows are definitely all year round feeders, as are blackbirds, robins and chaffinches, although the later do vary in numbers. Goldfinches are always here too but the numbers dipped a little earlier in the spring. The tits all disappeared when they were nesting as live food needed to be their mainstay. They are now back with avengeance and have been for a good month or so. The woodpeckers are now a little absent for the first time this year with just the youngsters appearing now and again. Dunnocks have been absent for a while but are now starting to appear again. Siskins are now back in huge numbers after a dip in the spring/ early summer. Greenfinches are still occasional feeders and we haven't seen bullfinches since the winter. Possibly unwelcome and frequent visitors now are magpies but whilst they scare off the smaller birds, they aren't here all the time and with the numbers of feeders we have, some small birds come back pretty fast. Nuthatches are around most of the time, and we loved seeing the youngsters coming to feed with mum and dad last month, but they seem to be having a bit of a break now. Have probably missed some out, Hopefully we can mention them another time. |
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12th: More shenanigans with the hedgehogs You have to wait for it at the start!! LOL!! |
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13th: Flies The hedgerow at the very bottom of Oak is a very good place to spot invertebrates. These are two from this morning: a Wetland Hoverfly (Pyrophaena rosarum) on the left and a new species for us; and a rather grossly named Flesh fly (Sarcophaga carnaria) on the right.   |
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14th: Moth trapping 140 moths, 35 species, 14 of them new!! One of our best ever. Here are just a few of the highlights - with the usual assortment of weird and wonderful names. Dark triangle and Common Footman 
Brimstone and Drinker 
Copper Underwing and Six-striped Rustic 
Pebble Prominent and Beet Armyworm 
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15th: Numbers Oodles of hammock/ sheet webs (made by money spiders) in the gorse and 20 swallows resting on the line - won't be long before they are doing this ready to fly back to Africa!!   |
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16th: Sunshine The weather continues to be effortless sunshine. Photography is thoroughly enjoyable in such weather. Autumn Hawkbit and a hungry Hoverfly (species unknown) plus a well-worn Comma butterfly   The thistles having really gone for it with their seeds this last week or so.  Staggerweed and Poppies   A very smart wood pigeon and more thistle seeds   |
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21st: This is why we built ponds This is what happens when you build ponds.... all week we have been treated to the best aerial displays and water bombing by swallows and house martins - too numerous to count but at any one time we are spotting upwards of 50/ 60 in the skies at once. We have never had this many on our land in all our years here (nine). Total and utter magic. Swallows are doing ok at the moment in terms of numbers but House Martins have been on the red endangered list for a few years (along with Swifts). It's great to be providing them with a habitat they need. |
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22nd: Poultry area We still call it the Poultry Area despise the lack of poultry - it seems fitting to remember our birds this way. It is also a part of the smallholding that has changed the most. The brash piles are very popular - this female sparrow was one of many. The pigeon meanwhile was doing her best to look elegant before flying down for a quick drink. The meadow grasshopper wasn't in the Poultry area but are so common all over the land. This one is sporting a missing back leg, but in other ways is looking immaculate. It is the time of year when a lot of invertebrates are not looking their best is has to be said, with missing limbs and damaged wings being all too common.    |
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23rd: Swallows and House Martins - now compulsory and daily viewing AND it seems our two nests are being used again!! Although with the barn one we are not sure a brood was raised as there was no poo underneath, although we did find egg shells. But it does look as though it now has adults in and out of it during the day and birds sleeping there at night - same as in the nest in the stables. We will monitor carefully!! |
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24th: A morning in the grasses Just crouching down and watching in the grass can reveal some pretty awesome creatures Yellowsided clover sawfly (tenthredo notha) - A NEW species for us and a Carder bumble bee   A rather bedraggled Southern Hawker dragonfly - another NEW species (it got trapped in the dog room sadly) and a Yellow dungfly   European cranefly and a Common green grasshopper   |
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25th: An amazing spot on the trail cam We 'think' this is a Green Sandpiper. It's hard to see but the markings and behaviour tend to point in that direction. If so, this is very exciting. Green sandpipers don't breed here but pass through as they migrate south in the autumn, flying from their Scandinavian breeding grounds to spend the winter in Africa. They can be see from July although some do stay here over winter before heading off in the spring |
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26th: Finding again Today we had another female Southern Hawker fly into the dog room - this time we were in the house and heard it and so were able to rescue it before it bashed itself on the windows too much. We snapped a quick shot of it in the container before it flew off. Exquisite animals. AND we were rather chuffed to spot this water mint in the hedgerow at the bottom of oak field - we did find a specimen last year but didn't take a photo. It has a beautiful flower and it really does smell of mint!! We hope we can get it to grown in and around some of the ponds!!   |
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27th: Rain Every now and again we get the odd splash of rain - never enough to make any real difference to the dry land. We did however, get a shot of this beautiful meadow grasshopper this morning in the rain, complete with a large waterdrop trapped by its back legs and reflecting the grass around it!! Just gorgeous!!   |