Mother nature gives with one hand and takes with the other

So the celebrations of three badgers were cut short. The next night only two came and since then it's just been Big Boy gorging himself on a variety of foodstuffs. He thoroughly enjoyed garlic bread balls, and a big lump of noodles and last night he polished off a couple of bananas in addition to some pitta bread.

But whilst it was a shame that the badger bonanza stopped we were rewarded at the weekend whilst completing some pond maintenance. Having cleared a load of leaf matter from the bottom of the pond and working on relocating the pond pump two grass snakes scrambled out of the pond and made for the shadows. They had been regulars in the sun two years ago but had not made an appearance in recent times and what with the lack of pond life the suspicion was that they'd eaten up and moved on. Later that same day, once the pond had settled down again we were pleased to see a little frog pop his head up. He was not adult size but also seemed too large to have been spawned this year. That said, we have seen no evidence of spawn this year and only had one glimpse of an adult frog at all in the past twelve months.

And then to cap it all, this evening we had a surprise visitor, previously unseen in the garden. Although not rare, it was great to glimpse a male Southern Hawker dragonfly, and true to the description on the British Dragonfly Society website it buzzed us up close, sat in the fir tree for a few seconds, flew past the pond and was gone, a real treat.

And then there were three

The badgers have been noticeable by their absence this year with just Big Boy being the only visitor throughout Winter and Spring and then during the Summer he has refused to come any earlier than 10pm, but at least he has been loyal. He has taken much delight in garlic bread balls and noodles recently but last night we were surprised to see that he was joined by two new badgers. They all seem to have arrived at the same time and from over the field, rather than down the side of the playhouse where last year's ones emerged from. There was no animosity amongst them, the food was amicably shared and then when it was all gone, Big Boy remained on his owned just to make sure that all of the peanuts had been eaten. As it was getting dark it was difficult to discern too much about the new arrivals, suffice to say they were of good size, although we know ones born this year could already have reached the size of a cat by now, and the tail sizes did not give anything away as to sex. We will watch again tonight to see if all three return.

As an aside, two weeks ago we returned from a camping trip to the Isle of Wight, staying east of Ryde near Seaview. Nice little campsite near a nature reserve where we saw many of the usual species, along with a flock of Barnacle Geese and three foxes playing in a field. Got some nice close up sightings of a Little Egret and Grey Heron fishing on the seashore.