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.