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resist picking one up if I see it. They make the perfect adornment to my hat.

to glide effortlessly along. But if you pick them up they tie themselves in knots. Literally. They curl into a rough ball, looping their curls together into a living clove hitch.Any gardener should always be pleased to find centipedes. Since

today, nearly 150 years later."I have known one make its way habitually through a zinc pipe into a green-house, and do much service there by picking aphides from the slender stalks of herbaceous plants, which bent into the form of an arch under even its

and saw what was clearly a very distinctive spider that I knew I would not have much difficultly finding in an ID guide. I picked it up to have a look under the lens. Ouch. It's not at all human-lethal, but it was as sudden and painful as a wasp sting

on a neighbour's window sill. I picked it up and even at this size I could feel the enormous pushing power it wielded in its front legs as it clawed its way out from between my finger and thumb. And to my delight, when it had escaped from my grasp

cycle, surviving the winter in the silk-cocooned egg stage, Tegenaria females can live for several years, a result of living in those sheltered voids and avoiding the extremes of wet and cold suffered by outdoor species.I once very cavalierly picked up

not to worry. Unlike honeybees and wasps, bumblebees are very docile and not prone to attack even if you stand right in front of the nest entrance. Having said that, four-year-old picked up what he thought was a dead one on the path nearby and it promptly stung

was solved a couple of days later when I watched a bird delicately pick bright red berries from an ornamental shrub down in Purley. I made a few notes: grey head, dark cheek patch, reddish brown wings, pale grey breast, brownish bib, white side flecks, pale

I've just been sorting through some insect specimens accumulated last year (specimen case pictured, left). Most have come from environmental surveys, but there are a few picked up elsewhere, including several gardens. I'll take them up

the bird’s exact shape and size. Occasionally it comes out onto the bark to fidget about, but most of the time it stays indoors and keeps bobbing its head in and out of the hole. What on Earth is it up to?I can only imagine that it is picking up bits