Search - Articles

I seem to have created the perfect habitat for my frogs. It's not a large garden, marsh or meadow, but a tatty grow bag from last year, screened by willow edging and topped with dead foliage. It's an absolute eyesore and I hate it, but to my frogs

This week a new type of lawn was born. The flower-rich, low-maintenance, wildlife-friendly sward was launched at a park in Kensington and Chelsea, after its creator, Lionel Smith, wanted to explore alternatives to the traditional grass monoculture

On holiday in northern France last week I was struck by the similarities in the landscape, but very subtle differences in the wildlife.With its gently rolling hills, hedges, grazing meadows, small woods, narrow lanes and winding streams, I could

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

of about 20 white eggs. Each egg is beautiful under the microscope, squat, almost spherical with 25 to 30 fluted grooves running top to bottom.And shortly before posting this, I've just walked into the front garden to find a male meadow brown butterfly

stercoraria. It's scientific name means, rather unsurprisingly 'dung-eating dung-inhabiter' and it's one of those insects that is very easy to overlook in the garden. In a grazing meadow they are obvious and multitudinous insects, speckling the fresh cow pats

rump, dark tail, thrush size. Ah! Fieldfare. I don’t remember when I last saw one of these — 35 years ago? I always associate them with large flocks settling in the grazing meadows of my uncle’s farm near Sittingbourne, Kent. As their name suggests

scatologist perhaps? Looking for dung beetles is an oddly satisfying occupation, and I’ve spent many a happy hour working my way round a grazing meadow dissecting cow pats to see what goes on in this hidden world of natural by-product recycling.Horse dung

for July's issue of the magazine I wanted to see more of Britain's 59 species, so researched which ones I might see on a trip I was planning, to Dorset. There, I found meadow browns and a small copper in the field we camped in. Then, walking along

the gardener, but is a desert for insects. So in front of the Bar we laid a strip of wildlife turf, which is enriched with dozens of wildflowers and nine different types of grass. We'll grow it long, then cut it, as we do the wildflower meadow, just twice a