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My 2010 garden tally of butterfly species is now up to six. We've had single visits from large white, comma, peacock and small tortoiseshell. They obviously didn't find much of interest in my garden, so dipped down, bustled about one circuit

in East Dulwich. But no, it was a grey squirrel. It was singing.Sitting in the crook of the large, rather gangly, elder tree in a neighbour's garden, the squirrel was staring into space, bleating out its miieeeoorrrl, call over and over again. I’ve never

Walking back from the Horniman Museum last week took me past a large oaktree growing just inside a front garden. The tree looks like an old pollardand must pre-date the early 20th century houses hereabouts. What caught myattention were all

she was not feeling well. Now the two-year old has got it, so I'm trundling him in his buggy through the Horniman Ornamental Gardens in Forest Hill. He sleeps, so I can try and work out how to put a tree trail together for the new gardens

. The speckled wood is a slim elegant creature, with large broad brown wings, and yet the squat green pupa under the frisbee looked wholly other.The speckled wood is unique amongst British butterflies in that it regularly overwinters in both caterpillar

. It is not one of those gardener-friendly hoverflies lauded for its voracious aphid-hunting larvae. Instead, its large glutinous maggots chew away at the insides of daffodil bulbs; at best leaving a large open wound in the damaged and weakened bulb, at worst

of the annual migration back to their birth ponds. I’m fairly lucky in that, although my back garden is not ever so large, it is part of a large block of gardens where hedges and fences are tatty enough to allow these beasts fairly easy passage.We have a pond

it was ... a large dog? Or maybe... I still have the hand-written welcome note left by our host on the table just inside the lobby "Richard, be aware that a medium-sized unaggressive bear is in the area. He won't bother you and is just mooching about."

Since having to wear reading glasses (my squinting started about 4 years ago), I do that 'double take' thing of having to square my face to something then back off a few inches to get it into focus. I did this a few days ago in the garden

the garden. It was very low, only just clearing the apple tree. This may have had something to do with the large pigeon it was clutching in its talons. It flew, rather laboriously I thought, down over the gardens to the short row of tall trees that bound