The butterfly garden is looking absolutely fantastic right now – a riot of colour and variety, smothered in bees and butterflies – exactly how it should be.

A close up of a Green-veined White butterfly feeding. You can see a lot of detail in there (click the photo for a bigger close up), including the mottled grey pattern of the eye. Apparently this is a very common butterfly, but looking particularly interesting here on the underside of its wings.

This is a Small Magpie moth resting on the underside of a nettle leaf in the orchard. It’s only small, but very pretty, and seems to prefer landing upside down – at least for all the while that I was chasing it.

Finally an unusual visitor in the new pond – a leech, happily nosing around in the shallows. Quite a big one too – a few inches long. Credit to Penny for spotting it!

Our esteemed chairman Steve recorded some bat sounds a few months back. His analysis suggests that the sound in question is a Daubenton’s bat (on which, more information here). The sound he recorded is available as an MP3 file here so have a listen. Of course the sound would ordinarily be too high pitched for human ears but the special bat detector brings it within our audible range.

Sheila tells me this is the first (only?) Gadwall seen at the reserve for 18 years! This is a male, which unfortunately flew off shortly afterwards.

There were five Moorhen chicks out and about. They look pretty ugly if you ask me – little balls of black fuzz with a bald head and stubby bald winglets.

This Magpie was admiring his reflection in the new pond.

And finally a snail – Arianta arbustorum if my ‘looking things up on the web’ skills are not mistaken!

Work started at today’s working party on the new pond on site and it seems that quite a bit of the local wildlife has already moved in. Several newts were spotted in the new pond, in addition to the pond skater seen on the surface. As we were digging and using the soil to level footpaths and fill in other holes this small frog was also found in the grass.

I know they say that nature will often be quick to colonise new ponds, but I didn’t think it would be this quick!

A balmy day at the reserve today. I can almost feel the plant life spring back up. The kingfisher was extremely accommodating – perching in the sun close to me. This is a male as the whole bill is black. A female would have a red lower bill (though juvenile males have some red on the lower bill).