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eating and growing until just large enough to transform into the fleeting adult.Although I find them regularly, I've never seen vapourer caterpillars in any great numbers, but according to several of my moth books they can occasionally be so numerous

to be relatively common. And second they have to have some impact on humans: they have to be pretty or sinister, pest or helper, biter or worth eating. In other words, they have to get noticed. Tachina fera is large, but it has the secretive life style of searching

No, it’s not quite time for hibernation yet. Just a bit of sun in the garden and all kinds of intriguing insects are out again. I thought maybe I’d seen the last of this year’s hoverflies, but a drowsy marmalade fly, Episyrphus balteatus

To Soicherons, Villars-Dompierre, in the Cote d'Or region of France for two weeks and the wildlife here is subtly different to that in East Dulwich. For one thing we are surrounded by large flowery meadows, hedges dripping with Mirabelle plums

out of reach up in the foliage. I've only ever seen it once in summer, when dozens of specimens were flying about under a large tree in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. In winter it heads for the bark and is always there. I show them to the boy

There are wolf spiders all over my garden, so last week I had the Ivydale School Natural History Club semaphore signalling across the classroom. There is a connection … honest.These are great little spiders, very distinctive, unless you need to know

We are being invaded. I had not seen many harlequin ladybirds in my garden this year, but a few weeks ago I noticed that the larvae were climbing over the hedge from next door, in droves. This south-facing fence is covered with ivy and a

-footed bee hovered briefly outside the kitchen.I've just been wandering about the garden in my shirtsleeves, feeling the real warmth of the sun catch me, and it seems that all the wildlife has just been queuing up ready for this sunshine. The trouble is, I

I've always been rather sceptical about the benefits of bug boxes, ladybird and lacewing hotels and other artificial constructions marketed to improve the roosting conditions for helpful insects in the garden. I was once given a solar-powered insect

. They are in desperate need of some good PR. Having spent the last four or five months diligently, but rather secretively, helping the gardener by eating caterpillars, aphids, flies and other insects, now is the time they start making a nuisance of themselves around