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in the ground. They are mainly woodland insects, and nest in hollow trunks, branches or logs. Hence their predilection for Dulwich, the most heavily wooded part of the capital.It appears that the nest was spotted rather late in the year and a warning sign

must be the swift snatching up a flying insect. The last few evenings have been very good for insects bumping up against the lighted windows of the kitchen. Monday saw a female stag beetle, upturned, legs in the air, as she bumped into the wall

insects. Dysdera is well-equipped though, with large jaws that articulate up and down as well as left and right. It can open its mandibles, twist them round and skewer the carapace of its prey from above and below at the same time. And if it can't get a

and lays her pale beige marshmallow-shaped eggs (I estimated about 250), and that's it. Job done.Like most insects, her adult life is very short and with only one aim: to start off the next generation. This was only the second female I've ever seen

There's something buzzing round the grape hyacinths. It's a fat, furry brown bee and it's being very animated. I love these insects and get a real buzz myself seeing them each year, because they're one of the true heralds of spring. Anthophora

, a painful irony given they are nearly the only terrestrial crustaceans alive today, and that in the normal course of events they need cool damp places, otherwise their rather inefficient cuticle lets them dry out too quickly. Unlike insects which

. Not surprisingly for an RSPB initiative, most people (over 99%) wanted to improve their gardens for birds, but I was really very pleased to see that over 95% wanted to improve them for insects too.One of this month's tips (leave a fallen tree where it is or move

' thoracic legs near the head, and lacks the fat gripping prolegs and claspers towards the tail end, which moth and butterfly caterpillars use to grip the leaf.Despite textbook assurances that the insect is quite common and widespread, this is only the first

first thought were dark lines of silt washed along the high water mark were actually strand lines of dead insects. I listed over 100 species, including many beetles, but the vast majority were the winged male and female black ants. I tried to do a rough

Snow is not the best weather for finding insects, so I was not surprised, last week, when my brief wander up the garden found nothing. It didn’t help that I was under sustained attack from snowballing children at the time. But as my fellow bloggers