The new title image is from the Seabird Spectacular trip on the 30th May on which I was guiding. The boat visited the seabird colonies on Skomer Island before heading north into St. Brides Bay where we had a wonderful encounter with a pod of common dolphins before seeing large rafts of Manx shearwaters. A memorable experience for everyone onboard.

Blackpool Mill

I was scouting around Blackpool Mill today and was impressed by the number of beautiful demoiselles I saw along the leet and upstream of the main road. I saw a couple of grey wagtails, a pied wagtail and a dipper along the stretch upstream of the mill.

Pond life

Where are my Emperor dragonflies? By this time of the year about 10 have emerged from the pond - this year none. Could it be the awful summer last year which meant that no eggs were laid? Or, more sinisterly, could it be the alarming proliferation of huge and fierce larvae belonging to both Great and Lesser Diving Beetles?? A bit of pond dipping yesterday by visiting children (and adults!) revealed these monstrous things which proceeded to eat everything else in the dipping tray! I caught an adult Great Diving Beetle in the moth trap recently so I should have realised .......  On a related topic there seem to be quite a few Cockchafers around this year - 5 in and around the moth trap yesterday and 1 by the outside light this morning.

Any ideas please?

I have 2 bird boxes that have had sparrow nests in. One also contains a camera. I was surprised yesterday afternoon to see that the three babies had gone from the nest I was watching.  Today I was gardening and under that nest box were the three half fledged babies, all dead but with no visible injuries.  I buried them and swept up my hedge cuttings then suddenly found 3 more tiny babies under the other box. Again, no visible injuries but probably just hatched.
They have none of them been taken for food, none were hanging out of the nest box hole as they were all too young and were deep inside, none showed injuries. One box had a perch so I guess something could have stood on that but the other had no perch.
I cannot fathom what animal would plunder 2 nests within hours of each other, what animal could get in there, why it would only throw the babies out and, if the babies had died so the parents threw them out, what could kill 6 baby birds in one go?
Any suggestions?

Water Shrew

On 13th May about 25m above the stream at Castle Beach was this (dead) water shrew.  I've neither seen nor heard of one being found there before.

The new title picture is by Guy Hageman who had a memorable 40 minute encounter with the Bosherston otters on the Western Arm a couple of weeks ago.