Update

Well, despite regular calendar reminders to update this I keep forgetting! Which is a pity as there is lots going on in the garden at the moment.

1) Bumble Bees - we can haz them! Which is good because they're a bit endangered in the UK at the moment, but we always have a few buzzing around. Sue did the BBC Springwatch BioBlitz the other weekend and found we had more than one species of them.

2) Pond - I pulled out some of the more rampent weeds from the pond to open up some water, much to the annoyence of one of the newts! Going carefully through the weeds I pulled out to make sure any creatures got back into the pond I found a HUGE dragonfly lava which has clearly been lurking among the weeds for a couple of years and must be pretty much fully grown. We get damsel flies over the pond but I've not seen a dragonfly...though this beastie means we must have them now and again

3) Bird Boxes - again, no use of either box this year. This is odd as they're in a good place according to the books but not of interest to the birds. We did have a blackbird nesting in the hedge this year though, as we had a few juvenile blackbirds appear on the lawn one day hopping around and getting the hang of this flying lark! Also no sign of our custom-made, built in bat box being used..again..

4) Hedge - all new planting from a couple of years ago has got away in a manner which can only be called 'rampant', might even get some sloes on the sloe bush.

The only slight disappointment is that there has been no sign (or sound) of hedgehogs yet this year - but I'm optimistic we will hear them at some stage.

Mad as a pond full of frogs..

And the pond has been FULL of frogs this weekend, we've been counting somewhere between 10 and 15 at any one time, all croaking away. There only seems to be one clump of frog spawn as yet, which makes us wonder if there are a lot of males and only one female in the pond. But everywhere you look there are frogs, on the weed, under the weed, swimming around...  In previous years we've been quite worried about the number of tadpoles which do not metamorphose properly into frogs, but clearly there must have been quite a number which did given how many have returned as adults. We also got a brief view of a newt in there today, probably trying to avoid being squished by amourous frogs I should think. We've had newts consistantly for a couple of years now, though the eggs are hard to spot and newt-poles very furtive, so we don't know if they're breeding. They're common newts, and none the worse for that, including a male who does look very handsome!

Kit also had a hornet sighting in the tree house today. I trust him to identify it correctly because he's seen a hornet before and is unlikely to confuse it with a queen wasp. I'm sorry I missed it because they're such spectactular insects, though I hope it was only foraging and not looking to nest because we don't really have anywhere which can take a hornet nest safely and I'd hate to have them exterminated as they're so amazing and still quite rare - though numbers are up now. Over in the water park my mate Will says they always 'lose' a few bat boxes every year to nesting hornets. So as long as they don't nest, they're welcome to forage here any time.

No sign of any of the birds taking an interest in the new nest boxes yet, but it's still early days for that. But there are loads of them hitting the feeders still so I'm hopeful that the blue tits will make use of them.