I'm not even going to go there with the weather this week. Let's just say I got drenched to the skin twice and I'm actually having to sit under a blanket in the evenings. It's still August!
In better news, I've been enjoying the wildlife coming to me this week, which has meant some better photos to share with you all.
Just outside my living room window there is a buddleia bush still in flower (the ones in the main garden have given up) and it has been very busy with visitors.
There have been lots of butterfly species, such as these small whites and red admiral, but also small tortoiseshell, silver-washed frittilary, large white and peacock.
And also a new species for me this year, this lovely painted lady.
The painted lady is a migrant, and successive generations move northwards each year, reaching the UK in late summer. The numbers that reach us vary from year to year.
It's not just butterflies that have been visiting either. This Jersey tiger moth came to feed as well.
The Jersey tiger has a distinctive pattern making it easy to identify.
The Jersey tiger flies both day and night. It is only found in the South of England but is slowly spreading northwards. It is still considered nationally scarce but increasing, possibly due to the effects of climate change.
My other visitor was a little harder to identify but thanks to my invertebrate group on Facebook, I now know it is a female migrant hawker dragonfly.
The migrant hawker is a common resident in southern and central Britain but some may come in from the continent in late summer.
It is a small, fast-flying hawker that catches insects in the air so it wasn't feeding on this flower, just perching for a while.
The flowers are starting to fade now but I'm still enjoying watching the last few visitors before they're gone for good.
An even closer encounter this week was this caterpillar that I found on the inside of my front door. Deciding that this was not the best place for it, I scooped it up in my dustpan (I never touch caterpillars with hair or bristles) and popped it back outside on its foodplant - stinging nettles. It may have been looking for a place to pupate rather than feed but hopefully it will find somewhere more suitable. When it emerges, it will be a peacock butterfly, which will hibernate over the winter, possibly in one of our sheds.
Up close you can see the tiny spines covering its body and the white spots which identify it as a peacock.
And an even closer encounter this week came when I was removing some electric fencing on Wednesday. This cricket was on one of the posts and I went to brush it off (carefully) and instead it crawled onto my hand and didn't want to get off, so I took photos instead.
This is a long-winged conehead, identified by its green body and full-sized brown wings. It has a soft hissing 'song' that we can barely hear. It is a common species and mostly eats grass, although it will eat small inverts too.
Eventually I had to give it a bit of a poke (carefully) and it jumped off.
On Friday, I was out topping in the tractor and took my good camera with me, hoping to see the cranes (which I didn't) and get some good photos (which I did). I spotted this little deer family, a mother and her twin fawns (or kids), which were very cute playing about.
It is common for roe deer to have two or three young, unlike larger deer like the red which tend to only have one.
There seems to be lots of deer out on the moor at the moment, so I think they have bred well this year, but it may also be that we are out there more to see them.
But the main feature of my day was the buzzards. It wasn't long before they started to appear, perching on the posts around the field edges, looking for anything chased out by the tractor.
Buzzards eat a wide range of foods and would have been looking for small mammals, amphibians like frogs and inverts like worms. This helps make them a successful species.
I could get quite close in the tractor before they flew off, so I got some good shots.
We get quite a lot of pale buzzards like this one around the moor.
After a while, they came down into the field where the tractors had been cutting, looking for anything that popped up.
My 'shot of the day'. I thought this bird had lovely markings.
He spotted something in the grass.
He started flapping and tried to pull something, probably a worm, out of the ground. He didn't get it though.
It brightened up my day to watch them stalking about and hovering above me (yes they can hover, although not as well as kestrels), and I did see some successful hunts, usually followed by a brawl as another bird tried to steal their catch.
I also saw a couple of hobbies out looking for dragonflies, but they were much too quick to photograph.
My walks though Swell Wood and Greylake this week were accompanied by heavy downpours so no sightings from there I'm afraid.
Oh, and I've spotted the swallow chicks briefly but they're still mostly hidden down in the nest. I hope this bad weather doesn't cause them problems but I'll keep you updated.
That's it for another week. The last blog of summer. I can't believe it. Let's hope we get at least a bit more decent weather before Autumn really gets a grip.
Take care,
Kathryn
West Sedgemoor Residential Volunteering team