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, 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

pests out there which we, in Britain, will never have to deal with in our gardens.For example in Trinidad there is a large ant (about 1cm long) called a bachak that will (along with a few hundred friends) quickly demolish a garden. They even eat onions

have quite heavy infestations. The tips of affected plants are usually covered with the little blighters, which are carefully tended to by a handful of busy ants. The ants 'farm' the aphids for their sweet, sugary secretions, called honeydew. They push

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

The New Zealand flatworm was first introduced to the UK in the 1960s, although it has never become as great a problem as was originally feared. It's purple-brown on top, and flat and pointed at both ends. When resting it coils up, is covered

Garden Birdwatch.Birds will only visit gardens where they feel safe. The ideal bird-friendly garden has a mixture of trees and shrubs for birds to shelter in, a lawn from which ground-feeding birds can forage for ants and worms, and a wild, grassy area

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

problem: the hazel (unlike many plants) cannot fertilise itself, so needs to find another tree. How to disseminate pollen from one tree to another? Many plants use insects — bees, wasps, moths, butterflies or ants — while others draw on the services

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