She looks really healthy which is nice to see. What was even nicer to see were two fawns that she had alongside her.
Most roe deer fawns are born in June so it's likely these fawns are somewhere between four-six weeks old. Roe deer usually have two fawns, one of each gender, which again probably fits here. The fawns seemed fairly confident, happy to allow their mother to walk a little way away from them. They also seem to be quick learners. I watched as the doe approached a tree and reached up to eat the leaves. One of the fawns followed her and did exactly the same thing.
It was a delight to be able to watch these young deer for a few minutes and I hope I will see them again.
There are still a few canada geese over on the nursery field but now all the goslings are close to looking like adults.
There's a family of swans whose cygnets are rapidly growing up on the Avon too.
Most of my other sightings this week were once again in the invertebrate world. As I was going through a wooden gate I spotted this stunning moth taking shelter on it.
This is the magpie moth, which has become a personal favourite of mine. It has such a pleasing pattern to it. This is actually a fairly common moth which can be found in gardens.
Another moth spot this week was this six-spot burnet moth on a thistle.
You can clearly see the six red spots which give this species it's name. It's a day-flying moth and it's distinctive colour mark it out as toxic to predators- when it is attacked it emits a liquid which contains cyanide.
I saw plenty of common insects in the same area like gatekeeper butterflies and common blue damselflies but I was found one species of damselfly which I didn't recognise.
Sometimes you should guess at the names of species you don't recognise because you'll often be very close to the truth. This is a small red-eyed damselfly. Amazingly this species was first recorded in the UK in 1999 but since then it has spread over most of England. It's quite similar to the red-eyed damselfly but the distribution of the blue is different.
That's all for today but I now have six weeks off for the summer holidays (the benefit of working in a school) so I hope to update a little more regularly. I'll be tweeting things I see most day on my Twitter feed.
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