The first brood of house martins in the nest under our eaves fledged on  July 2.  Sadly I found a house martin corpse on the front lawn soon after. Hopefully the other young have fared better. Currently a second brood is on the way and the young in the nest are being fed by two very busy parent birds.

It seems to have been a good summer for butterflies with good numbers of peacock, small tortoiseshell and some red admirals on our buddleia. Others on the wing in and around the village have included ringlet, meadow brown, gatekeeper, speckled wood, marbled white, holly and common blue, small and large white and small copper.  RP