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saw a note on the British Bugs email interest group that someone had found it on his allotment in Suffolk and was enquiring about its status. At least the soil is sandy there; if it can make itself at home on our heavy London clay, it can live anywhere

of worm regeneration.The trouble is that if a worm is cut in two, both halves wriggle, and they may continue for some time. The head end, the bit with the fat broad saddle segments about one-quarter down the length, may even burrow off into the soil again

, but the land tips steeply down to the sea presenting the perfect soil-warming angle to the sun.I think we are the first residents of the bungalow this year and the garden has been recently 'tidied' i.e. savagely cut, mown, and cleared. The pampas grass tussock

harvest of rich dark soil ... full of egg shells. Oh well. They soon get broken into pieces as we mulch them in; they'll help improve the drainage.

exactly which one of our nearly 40 species are scuttling about. Rather than spinning a web to catch prey, they hunt by chasing after small insects on the soil and in the leaf litter. They get their English name from this behaviour and it was long believed

, the drain is perfect for it. It receives a tiny dribble of rain run-off from only a very small part of the roof, and gets plenty of organic material from the soil particles and spilled food flushed down when we occasionally hose off the patio. In effect, we

cannot burrow into the soil beneath. Instead, they just sit there until some unfortunate child wheels a bicycle through the noisome mess.So I took my broom and a bucket of water and shlooshed them away. Such a waste. Oh well, I can always go and see what

and fed them on cubes of luncheon meat or the occasional tiny slug. Eventually they would get tipped into the garden ponds, two ceramic butler sinks sunk into the soil, and they lived there for several years.As far as I know the newts still breed in those

in the loose soil, the bee-flies will be on hand to take advantage. They are brood parasites. With a characteristic bobbing flight, they flick their tiny bouncing-bomb eggs into the bee burrows. The bee-fly larvae quickly hatch, then eat pollen, nectar and host

architects who smother and pollute those remaining bits of well-drained soil with the likes of cherry laurel and plush mown lawn.The new housing developments in south-east England remind me of Anville, the uniform town that is the home of The Cat in the Hat