Search - Articles

estimate of numbers. Each of five or six bands contained about 1000 ants for each 10cm; so that's over 50,000 per metre, extending at least 1km  in each direction. My conservative estimate gives 100 million insects in our short stretch of beach alone. Now

, and my brain just could not cope with the notion that a woodpecker could be up there.I now know (I've looked it up in books) that these glorious birds are after insects in the turf, as well as dead wood, and that ants are a firm favourite. So I

scale, Parthenolecanium corni, is a beast of curious form indeed. It hardly looks like a living creature at all, and more like a small wart on the plant stem. I noticed them for the first time when photographing ants running up and down the branches

in an old disused sandpit I guess I will never discover, nor how long it had been there.It is much too big for the local foxes to bother with, but I have already seen a solitary bee, an Andrena species, sunning itself on the forehead, and ants have been

, then this is the creature. But, sadly, it is just 'one of the ichneumons', which is quite frankly pathetic. Ichneumons are large and striking insects, allied to bees, wasps and ants. (Ichneumon is also another name for the Egyptian mongoose but we don't get those in East

which of the 14 UK species they might be, I can tell the sex easily. The males (a specimen is pictured above) have huge palps, the long feelers (almost like short extra legs) near the head, that look like they are wearing boxing gloves.Like all spiders