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... to the discussions about different kinds of animals affected by this year's strange weather. Apart from Queen wasps in late March (a heat wave, do you remember??) we have not seen a single one in our garden since. No young birds learning to fly have been seen here, as I gather most of them died in their nests of starvation as the parents could not find food for them.  Butterflies were very scarce at home until the second week in August when the sun came out of hiding for a couple of weeks, when suddenly they were everywhere, but only a few kinds, I think. However, we have ants' nests in our 'lawn', some of which have been there for some time (indication of unimproved grassland, I suppose).  But we have at least 5 new ones this year, all heaving with burgeoning thousands of ants. I would have supposed that ants would have a hard time in a soggy season, especially ones in lawns, but the opposite seems to be true. Does anyone have any explanations for this? And plants are still behind their usual times. Late-flowering ones like Blue Fleabane came into flower in April (yes, really!), but lots of later ones are still not in flower, especially the variations on Michaelmas daisies, and the alien grasses that are usually late but were still not in flower in late August ie two days ago. And the met office tell us it has been the coldest and wettest summer for about 100 years.  We would never have guessed, would we??!!