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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

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

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