On my weekly trip to the Lodge for a short walk I was thrilled to find butterfly central in the garden. There were red admirals, peacocks, small whites, commas and meadow browns sometimes in the same frame. The highlight was a hummingbird hawkmoth which joined Nick, the gardener, and I for a few moments. Time to dial up the shutter speed. There was plenty to see if you look closely enough with shield bigs and 7-spot ladybirds around. I am so luck to have this excellent resource on my doorstep. If you know what you are looking for you can see rarer little beasties like the horse-chestnut miner moth in the slightly rough photo on the tree bark. It is only about 5mm long. According to Wikipedia it was first really noticed in the Balkans in the 1980s and has spread across Europe at a prodigious rate. You can tell if your horse-chestnut trees have these little devils if the leaves brown and fall in the summer rather than the autumn. The Lodge is on a hill and looks south to Biggleswade and on a clear day you can see the stages of development of this small Bedfordshire town. Is this the first sign of autumn, blackberries ripening. No!