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feeding on plants at night, and finding their caterpillars amongst the foliage. Just four years ago my garden was paved over, so finding moths here feels like real progress.Sadly, few gardeners welcome moths as warmly as they do butterflies

nibbled by caterpillars and I don't have any white foxgloves.The planting schemes in many of the gardens this year were superb. The Bradstone Biodiversity Garden was richly planted with cirsium, alliums, aquilegia and iris, and it seemed to be doing

, was a fat, green caterpillar. I've no idea what the caterpillar was; there are so many green caterpillars, and not all of them are the small cabbage white. I grudgingly decided that butterflies and moths are far fewer in number than foxgloves, and a new

the bumblebee nest and hangs around outside for a few days to pick up its scent. Once she has done this, she enters the nest undetected to lay her eggs. These hatch into caterpillars, which start off by eating the nest debris before moving to the wax pots

year, they’re as regular as clockwork.The birds usually arrive in the first week of May, and carry out a recce of the garden to make sure it can still meet their needs (i.e. that it has a good supply of caterpillars and sunflower hearts). Then I see one

for Ornithology (BTO) research suggests it could be related to the changing nesting behaviour of its hosts, plus a decline of available food (caterpillars). Cuckoos usually lay their eggs in the nests of dunnocks, meadow pipits, pied wagtails and reed warblers

will be reduced, while caterpillar food plants could die through lack of water, taking the caterpillars (and therefore butterflies) with them. The dry, hard ground will make life hard for robins and blackbirds looking for worms to feed themselves and their young

, where birds such as sparrows can hunt for caterpillars and garden pests. A clean bird bath provides them with water to drink and clean their feathers (which enables them to insulate themselves against the cold).There’s nothing like that in my garden

ready for the council to come and collect. On some of the leaves were ladybird pupae, while spiders spun new webs in the wreckage. There may also have been chrysalises of the holly blue butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on ivy in summer. They

weeks, just when the beetles, caterpillars and slugs that hedgehogs rely on for food are themselves settling down to hibernate. Despite being nocturnal, autumn orphans are likely to be seen out during the day as they try to find food to gain weight