The Garden's Doing Well

 My little rear garden above, is doing really well this year for breeding birds. In the variegated shrub in the foreground left a pair of Blackbirds nested but lost their eggs, probably to a Magpie that has been prowling about, but might not be much longer. At the top end of the garden I currently have a pair of Great Tits and a pair of Blue Tits both feeding chicks in two boxes just a couple of feet apart. The Blue Tits are in the concrete nest box seen below. Hidden behind the old tree trunk and below the green nest box that you can see, are the Great Tits.

 Here's the Great Tit's home with some very noisy chicks in it.

All that going on at this end of the garden.

This hawthorn hedge has also come up trumps. Behind the gate a pair of Robins nested in it in an old teapot that I had put there for that purpose and fledged their young. This is the second time I've had Robins nest in an old china tea pot, it works really well. At the near end of the hedge a pair of House Sparrows are currently nesting, hence the hedge's still un-trimmed state, but it makes for a short hop to the bird tables for food. And to complete the success story another pair of House Sparrows are nesting on the house wall in a Sparrow terrace nest box with three compartments. This box is used most years but only ever by one pair at a time, I've never had multiple nesting as is supposed to happen.

The insects are also provided for and one of the current food suppliers for bees at the moment is this Borage. It's a self-seeded plant from last year's plants and the bees love it.

As they do this Creeping Thyme, that in the first photo you can see spreading it's way across the bank behind the pond. Many other types of flowers are also currently growing and they will continue to attract bees and butterflies until well into the autumn.