The first Kingfisher I’ve seen on the reserve arrived today to check out the small pond, they tried all of my perches.

I had a trip around the reserve on Saturday specifically to capture some photos of the butterflies around on the reserve at the moment. It seems to have been a good butterfly season this year.

Thanks to Brian Harle and his crew for carrying out a moth survey on the reserve, over a couple of nights.

Over the two night they identified 31 different species and there is  some photos of a few of them below.

Moth capturing light box

Brian and crew

Drinker – Male

Drinker – Femail

Fen Wainscot

Plume moth

Poplar Hawk Moth

Thanks to Hazel and Nick for doing a bat survey on the reserve on Monday evening.

I will update the post when I get the official results from Hazel but we did detect at least three different bat species on the reserve.

The pics below are Hazel and Nick scanning for bats and a Soprano Pipistrelle bat that hazel brought along for Nick to do a medical check.

I spent a while watching this female laying eggs all around my small pond, amazingly agile little creature.

Many thanks to our friends at IMMI, based on Coopies Lane Industrial Estate, who sent a working party around to the reserve today as part of their community program.

We had 9 workers doing various jobs on the reserve.

They got through a fair bit of work helping to re-chip our parking area, path maintenance, and a bit of wood and log moving. They saved me a lot of work for which I am very grateful, and they were a happy bunch too.

With the help of Conner from the Princes Trust, who made our letter templates, I have started to put up signage around the site. Still a way to go but we have started.

Our little friendly Robin had one brood predated but persisted with a second  brood, this time hidden in our woodshed which proved more successful than the previous bucket next to the entrance!

Five eggs, five chicks, five fledged yesterday, Hurrah!

Now we have our woodshed back.