I'm not going to spend any time blogging purely about the weather today (as everyone is doing that - and I'm sure like me, it bores you rigid) - but I will take a few minutes to at least give a metaphorical nod to the weather in this post.

I adore this time of year.

Wildlife is at its peak - or seems to be.

Everything is rampantly breeding or feeding or growing - and my favourite birds of all (swifts of course) are slicing up the big skies with their scimitar wings and screams.

We've had a pretty warm six weeks or so now and at present we're undergoing very humid, thundery weather - which is so exciting at night.

Both the (admittedly poor) photos were taken by me last night. The second photo shows a plane seemingly head into the heart of a flashing cloud, a thunderhead. Both the photos were taken around 10pm (so in the dark).

Yes.... last night was one of those weird nights that I love so much here.

The completely still (weird enough here at "Swift Half") evening sky firstly was filled with our screaming swifts buzzing the house, long after all their other avian cousins had called it a night, then lit up by a 97% moon (it becomes full tomorrow), then filled with our helicoptering thunder beetles - then our (two pipistrelle) bats (which only seem to hunt in our garden - nowhere else on the road - and finally thunder and lightning!

I'm sure the lowland heath down the road was reverberating to the sound of calling nightjars too.

I don't think evenings get better than this around here.

Humid, still, steamy evening skies filled with... well... weird stuff.

Wonderful!