My favourite day of the week is probably Sunday because it means I can sit in my garden and just listen to birdsong without having constant background noise from chainsaws, circular saws, trimmers and other equipment as there is a no-noise policy here one day per week. We have an extremely wide range of wildlife here – insects, birds and animals – and it still amazes me that I can just sit and watch large birds (raptors, ravens, storks) soaring overhead as though they were just common garden birds.
The featured photo is a Lesser spotted eagle.
This is a Honey buzzard:
This year we seem to have Lesser Whitethroats nesting for the first time. They are a warbler and make a very beautiful sound:
Unfortunately, we also have many stinging and biting insects. I can honestly say I’ve no idea just how many bee, wasp and hornet nests we have in the roof or in the garden. This is a hornet returning to its nest just above the garage:
Again we went looking for Cep (porcini) mushrooms but it looks like it was just a freak pre-season flourish the other week as we haven’t found any since. I did find quite a cool red squirrel worksite, where the ground around the tree was littered in already eaten pine cones. They somehow manage to squeeze these large cones into the hole so they can eat them at their leisure.
Our expedition into a denser, older part of the forest was cut short after discovering a large pile of scat. While there was obviously a huge sounder of boar in the area (their latrine absolutely stank), this pile was very fresh and came from a much larger and more dangerous creature. Bear scat:
Scary.
