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I'm just back from a weekend visiting an old friend in Banwell, near Weston-Super-Mare. Always envious of his rambling house and large walled garden, we got to talking over garden wildlife and the troubles of traipsing fox dung through the kitchen

.It's eagerness to fly is probably linked to the fact that it is unlikely to be eaten by predators - its bright colours are a warning of poisonous and distasteful chemicals inside its body. So it takes to the wing without a care and dashes brazenly about to a new

. First, they need shelter and warmth to aid (and speed) the complex physiological transition from larva to adult. Second, they need to get out of the way of things that might eat them. For the harlequin ladybird, a major predator is another harlequin

predators in the garden and they attack all manner of real pests including caterpillars, aphids and flies. They feed the chewed remains to their grubs back at the nest. The last five years have been really bad for wasps; either the hibernating queens have

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

of knowing that the elegant black and white birds they were mobbing were worth the effort of attack. Evolution works slowly, so surely there could not have been any innate image of a potential egg predator in their minds. I wonder what behaviour

The loose bark on old logs is one of the most important hibernating sites for all manner of insects. Here they can remain sheltered from predators, and also from their main enemies during winter: frost and damp. This week they will be sorely tested

hibernation now are mostly green, but the summer form has vague reddish brown patches across its back. It too has a slight smell of mouldy almonds, especially if picked up; these are the bitter-tasting cyanide compounds used by shieldbugs to deter predators

months hidden in hibernation in some dry secluded spot, the queens, with a store of sperm from autumn matings, venture out to an uncertain spring weather pattern, which is as unpredictable as any of the many other dangers they face from predators, disease

millipedes. But, just like the longer-legged species, they are predators of other small invertebrates.There were hundreds of them. The rotting timber was obviously the ideal site to shelter in. When they set off, they have a lovely fluid motion, and seem