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I don't really do birds. I'm usually too busy peering down at insects on flowers or running across leaves. Or I'm on hands and knees, bum in the air, turning stones over looking for ground beetles or grubbing at plant roots for weevils

-winged fly, Acinia corniculata, given Red Data Book 1 status - endangered - because it is known from so few places. I found one on the knapweeds (hardheads) in which the larvae live. The second was a weevil I knocked out of a bush nearby. It was a bit like a

in the carrot family, such as parsley, from carrot root fly and those in the brassica family, including salad rocket, from flea beetle.

counted about 15, the same number we get every year, give or take. They're late this year; in 2007 it was May 2nd.Then it was newts, three of them paddling about at the bottom of the pond. They were easily visible against the new butyl liner I had to put

on the sills for the half-tame squirrel. We duly obliged.On their return we got to chatting about gardens and wildlife, what the swifts were up to, how many stag beetles had come flying over. When talk turned to the half-tame squirrel I was told, very

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 October…and November, and before I knew it we had a winter without any apparent autumn. All those end of summer flies and beetles I expected never showed up. And no fungi either. It was all very disappointing.Postscript. It's just rained, all I needed

this late in the year the dung-flies are ready to recycle. The adult flies, although only 7-10 mm long, are fierce predators, attacking other small insects they catch on the wing. Unlike houseflies, they do not come indoors, are not attracted to human food

, Cheshire in the early 1960s, and was thought to have come back with some large pine cones picked up in the Portugal countryside and brought home as souvenirs. This was a false start, but it got a proper foothold in 1995, and is now everywhere.The southern

.In the meantime, hungry birds will make short work of seedheads and do a much better job of finding slug and snail eggs than I ever could. The frogs will bed down in their hibernaculum and among leaf piles, and the mouse, worms, slugs and beetles will stay warm