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I got up out of my sick bed to post this, I hope you know. Our brief dusting of snow may have gone, but it was too grim and grey to go exploring in the garden after hibernating ladybirds or flat-backed millipedes. Instead, I ventured upstairs

The foxes have been busy in my garden again. I haven’t seen them recently, but they leave their tell-tale signs. Occasionally I have cause to curse them, notably when I move the kids’ climbing frame to mow the lawn and find a putrescent latrine

Although, yes, technically it is a spider, I’m almost positive that nobody could really be scared of the zebra spider, Salticus scenicus. It lacks all those sinister characteristics that can cause unease among some people — it isn’t black and hairy, it doesn’t have long legs, it ...

(by weight) of the UK avian population; two UK sea ducks – the velvet scoter and long-tailed duck - are now threatened with global extinction.Not all is doom and gloom. In the chart of breeding bird trends, many familiar garden species are actually

It was only to be expected at this time of year, parent talk in the playground turns to frogs and toads. I haven’t seen any yet — too blistering cold, either for them to be moving or for me to out rootling in the garden — but I have just been shown

if we don’t get total extinction, we are likely to suffer biodiversity loss.Anyway, back to gardens. I had hoped to bring a live bumblebee into class. The very day before I had seen a huge buff-tailed (Bombus terrestris) queen sniffing out the daffodils

she hadn't dashed off into the depths. Today, though, when I nip out into the cold wilderness of my garden to have a little look around, I find there is a thin layer of ice on the pond.The rational part of me suspects that even though our pond is very

, but the discovery in 2011 that small tortoiseshell numbers had gone down by 68% in 10 years was pretty shocking. It has always been received wisdom that common generalist ‘garden’ species, like the small tort, were protected from some of the frightening declines