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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

, stilt-like legs and stiff T-shaped stance. I think it’s most likely the common bindweed plume, Emmelina monodactyla. I’ve got the tiny caterpillars chewing the bindweed leaves in my garden.There are about 40 UK plume-moth species, but as my colleague

. It was with a big gang of long-tailed tits that darted one by one between the shrubs with a little “deet deet deet”. I love long-tailed tits, and stood watching them for a while, when these tiny mouse-sized birds appeared. Their behaviour, shape and size were so

, it doesn’t have long legs, it doesn’t scuttle, it doesn’t lurk, and it doesn’t come out at night to creep across the living room carpet.Instead, it is bright and breezy, it has short shapely legs, it hops, jumps and skips, it struts carefully across a fence

A bat box works on the same principle as a bird box, except that bats prefer a wedge-shaped roost and enter through a gap underneath rather than a hole at the front. Using cheap, untreated wood, this box will give bats the perfect place to shelter

, a broken watering can and the rabbit's litter tray (which was very conveniently shaped I have to say). I've kept some of the pondweed in a bucket and spread the rest on a plastic sheet before I get rid of it on the compost heap. Not surprisingly

home in the empty Tupperware, after ham and cheese sandwiches were scoffed. They were easy to catch in the gently slanting shallows of the saucer-shaped ponds, either using a small pond-dipping net, or sometimes with our bare hands. Very occasionally

shape. Although it is an old variety (1906) its beauty hasn't been eclipsed. Height 1m.Papaver 'Mrs Perry'This slightly washed-out poppy bears the name of the 20th-century artist, who scoured East Anglia in the late 1930s, looking for pale versions

crab apple, hawthorn and potentilla, seem to be irresistible to our buzzing friends, as are the flowers of fennel, angelica and cow parsley, and sedums.Tubular-shaped flowers, such as foxgloves, snapdragons, penstemons and heathers, are also all