Today I got a call from my eldest son down in Cornwall. He said that he had seen a family of perigrine falcons out hunting. Last year I was at the same campsite near Godrevy Head and we saw a family of 3-4 peregrines over the campsite on different occasions.

On one occasion we saw the family flying over and a young bird (you can tell by the brownish rather than slate grey wings) had a large black bird hanging in its talons. It looked like the size of a rook which I found surprising as I cannot imagine that crows are very appetizing! Shortly afterwards in a field nearby there was a big commotion from a flock of rooks there.

Later I was walking on the coastpath on the cliffs towards Portreath. Again I saw a young peregrine flying with a parent. It was high above me and I was amazed that it stooped on a great black-backed gull. It very nearly connected, the gull did a neat swerve. The falcon gained height again and went for another attack. By this time the gull was flying steeply down towards the sea. The young falcon came very close to the gull again but decided it was too close to the water for comfort and flew on.

I wonder if these attacks on the rook and the gull were serious hunting - for food - or simply learning the technique of catching birds on the wing.

Although we have been spared the flooding of the Severn or Thames valleys (though my office is on the edge of the Thames flood plain!) my family and I have not had to worry about our house being flooded. Last Friday a collegue of mine had to rush home because runoff water from a field had gone into his ground floor.

On the few evenings I have been able to sit outside in the last few weeks, I have almost always heard the cries of the swifts as they gather for their night flight; I love the sound. I understand that they fly overnight so need sufficient height at the end of an evening. I am also aware that birds like swallows adjust their daytime height to match the height at which insect prey can  be found. I have a great memory of driving our family car down a farm track in Germany one dull day and seeing swallows at eye-level. Insects obviously low with the poor weather. Conversely I have seen swallows hunting at a high level with fair weather.

I have no way to estimate the height at which I see swifts in the evening. However, yesterday evening they seemed about double the height I had previously seen them. I thought maybe the weather would improve. Despite this weather today has been absolutely sodden. Maybe what swallows do does not translate to swifts!

We have a small garden pond that is about 3 metres long and 75 cm deep at one end. Over the last 3 years many little frogs have grown up there and there are plenty of water snails. We have also seen the odd newt and have seen dragonfly larvae in the water. Doubtless the dragonfly larvae feed well on the tadpoles! Although I have often seen damselflies by the pond I had never seen adult dragonflies until last night.

My eldest son is back from university and on Saturday he noticed that there were a number of dragonfly casings at the edge of the pond. Last night he took out the torch and saw a newly emerged dragonfly.

The newly-emerged dragonfly is on the right of its old larval casing which is attached to the bottom of the water lily leaf.

This morning all that was left to see was the empty larva casing on the lower side of the leaf.