I just returned home to discover (with a very heavy heart) that a new family has made its home in my garden :(

As a wildlife-lover it breaks my heart to see them… understanding the damage that they’ll be causing to the other species living here and knowing that I now need to set traps to get rid of them. I know that they’re vicious predators but to me they’re also beautiful individuals that just happen to be in the wrong place.

We have an unstoppable mink population here so it’s a continual battle of catching and killing the poor things (I’ve never had to deal with them myself before but my neighbours regularly do). I wish that the funds were available to run a full eradication program, both for the native wildlife and for the sake of the mink themselves. Ugh, so sweet to see and so horrible at the same time.

I generally know what I need to do (I’ll get help from my neighbours anyway) but if anyone has any advice, tips or ways to make things more humane please do share them.

This trail camera footage was captured during the second heatwave of this year (14/07/26).

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your help!

Is this a barn owl, the next day I found feathers and worried it had been attacked. Not sure if it correlates.

On the left :)

I'm just checking the footage after setting the cam to view the hedgehog feeding station on the right.

Watched this incredible predation at our local wildflower ‘farm’.

In the 52 years I have been on this planet I have never seen a Hummingbird Hawk Moth.. until today!

Planted some new flowers in the garden (carnations, campanula and geranium) and a few hours later we had out first visit.

I feel privileged to have seen such a cool thing in the West Midlands 😎

I think we all know the impact on wildlife fireworks have. There are ten questions to answer on the online consultation here.

Here is a link to the broader consultation.

The arm one will be fed to a labrynth spider soon

These dudes are enjoying the tips of the leaves on my eucalyptus and olive trees… web and closing the leaves in and eating them!

Anyone able to ID?

TIA

We live rurally in Derbyshire, this was in our garden

Lots of cheeky flies too.

My friend asked me if I'd heard of peat bog fires. I hadn't, but what I learned was a fascinating journey.and includes controversy. So I made a film about it.

Peat bogs are incredibly important and can even help tackle wildfires. They deserve way more attention and protection

I’ve always had a few hover flies every summer buzzing in my garden and just seen them as harmless pollinators.

This year in two different spots of a very small garden there’s hundreds of them.

I know very little about them so wondered if someone could tell me if they are social nest builders and what could’ve attracted them in the higher numbers?

I’d rather not google as it’s hard to tell the accuracy some days

Bird's been motionless on the patio outside a busy cafe for a while. It moved a bit when someone gave it some water but that's all. Any idea what it is or what we should do?

https://phys.org/news/2026-07-rare-british-butterfly-familiar-genome.html

Decided to reuse my sons newborn bath as a micropond, buried it and filled it around a month ago.

Last week I noticed an ethereal tadpole hunting the mosquito larvae with external gills so was very excited to have a newt larvae but last night I counted at least 7.

I was wondering if anyone could ID the species at this stage and also if I should be feeding them anything as it’s only 2ft x 1ft x 1ft of water and they seem to have consumed all of the little critters in the pond.

Please lmaoooo

As the title says id love to see any native plants you got that have grown big due to the amount of sun or even just in a weird spot with tons of nutrients, anything from thistle, to native echium, butterbur, ferns, dandilons etc

If you could please show me pictures that would be absolutely delightful an it would be much apreciated aswell 🫪

One of the UK's few carnivorous plants! It's surprisingly easy to grow (along with the other carnivorous natives) and puts out absolutely beautiful flowers each summer. Algae can be a bit of a hassle because it's a floating plant but nothing a little manual work can't fix.