Rye Harbour - early summer

Sandwich tern and Horse Mackeral (Scad).

Adult Cormorant flying back out to sea from the colony at Rye

Just one chick was being attended to by this adult Oystercatcher at Rye Harbour

Every year at the Ternery Hide there seems to be ringed pover pair building a scrape, laying eggs and then...nothing, As far as I know it always ends in failure.

Sandwich Terns seem to be having no trouble bringing in fish (unlike Tern colonies in Scotland).

Common Tern chasing away LB Gull from the Tern colony.

Wonderful Rye Harbour nature reserve, if only the Little Terns hadn't abandoned for a second year. For the reserve, all is not lost though, indeed far from it - all the Gulls and Terns have thriving chicks and Redshank and Oystercatcher also had family parties feeding around the scrapes.

Pale Prominent

The Pale Prominent moth is another regular visitor to the garden Moth light at the moment, or at least the zany males are (apparently females are not seduced so by the light). This furry boar-faced ragged doll, knows a trick or true - as I kept loosing it, whilst photographing it this evening, so clever is its camouflage against a pile of twigs.

Spectacle Moth

Here's a freaky reliable friend to the Moth Light at the moment. The Spectacle moth is easy to overlook until you get a closer look at this zany fake eyes. I can expect to find one or two most nights at the moment, so probably fairly common around Shadoxhurst.

Scorched Wing

Here's another common June visitor to the Shadoxhurst garden. Once seen never forgotten -it's both fun with its funky upturned back and burnt paper appearance, but also beautiful with its laced patterning and brown town and white hues.

Angle shades

Angle shades is another once seen, never forgotton Moth. It's easily identified part WW11 Lancaster bomber meets 21st century Stealth bomber appearance, gives hope to all casual Moth recorders that they haven't forgotten everything since last summer or indeed the last time they had the moth trap out.

White Ermine Moth

This is a common Moth on the wing at the moment, and extraordinarily beautiful, too. It has this 'play dead' trick which always works on me. Caterpillars, I think, are to be found on nettles, something we have in abundance at the back of the garden.

Mystery Garden Bug - Hawthorn Sawfly

I found this 'beast' sitting rather clumsily on grass stems on a bank down at the back of the garden. This morning was rather overcast and much cooler of late, and I thought it may have been simply sunning itself. It seemed docile but menacing, with large exaggerated bronze waxy wings (reminiscent of the infamous 'cleg' fly) and a pair of beautifully sculptured black antenae. However, the eyes are completely wrong for this species. It's as big as a medium size bee and very hairy.

With the help of Google, I now know this to be a Hawthorn Sawfly, harmless and distributed over the British Isles but more common in the South. Once again, I'm always amazed what new discoveries we might find in our gardens. An hour later the fly had gone. Will we ever see one again? Who knows!