Juvenile magpie attempting - and failing - to fend for itself

 Magpies have nested successfully again in a hawthorn near the end of our garden and their fledglings, now well grown, have been harassing their parents relentlessly for food. Lately the youngsters have been showing signs of foraging for themselves and this one mistook the squeaky toy belonging to a neighbour's dog for a real dead animal.

The young bird circled its prey cautiously at first, pecked it a few times to check that it was dead, stood on the toy's head and then pecked and tugged it furiously. 

The attack went on for about ten minutes but, apart from pulling out a few threads, the attacker never managed to reach the stuffing of the soft, cuddly carrion 

It probably would have continued until it broke through the outer covering, but then a parent bird arrived and fed it some real edible food.

Bumblebee nest

 Buff-tailed bumblebees Bombus terrestris are nesting under a moss-covered pile of rocks in the garden. There were field mice living in the rock pile last summer and apparently it's quite common for these bumblebees to nest in their tunnels after the rodents have abandoned them.

The workers are very active and there's a lot of busy pollen collecting going on at the moment, with bees returning with full pollen baskets very few minutes yesterday afternoon.

The pollen they are carrying is orange and most of it is probably coming from this plant, Geum 'Totally Tangerine', which is in full bloom. It's an excellent bumblebee plant for species with short tongues, with open, easily accessible flowers and a long flowering period. The bees collect the pollen by working their way around the central tuft of stamens, buzzing to shake the pollen free and into their fur, they combing it into their pollen baskets.

Green dock leaf beetles

 There are lots of broad-leaved dock Rumex obtusifolius plants around at the moment with foliage that looks like this, resembling green lace.

It's the handiwork of the larvae of the green dock leaf beetle Gastrophysa viridula - turn over a leaf where damage is just beginning and you'll find several on the underside, eating the soft tissue between the leaf veins. When fully fed they burrow down into the soil and pupate, emerging as adult beetles within a couple of weeks.

And here are the rather beautiful adult leaf beetles, mating. The abdomen of the female is so distended with eggs that it displaces her wing cases. She'll lay as many as 1000 eggs and, with a short generation time, the numbers of these insects can rise rapidly as summer progresses.