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There's a spider the size of a gardening glove in my compost bin. It obviously gets a good living in there, feeding on the flies, woodlice, beetles and earwigs, the remains of which can be vaguely guessed in its untidy sheet of a web. I wouldn

Moving some bricks around the shed yesterday revealed one of my favourite spiders. With a narrow reddish-pink body 25 mm long and long rather slender legs, there is no mistaking the 'woodlouse' spider, Dysdera crocata. It makes no web, but hunts

Although, yes, technically it is a spider, I’m almost positive that nobody could really be scared of the zebra spider, Salticus scenicus. It lacks all those sinister characteristics that can cause unease among some people — it isn’t black and hairy

marble or polished granite.But, as ever, it is the wasps that are making more than their fair share of the humming. And it is also they that are being killed. There are several spider webs amongst the ivy flowers, and some rather fat-looking and obviously

There are wolf spiders all over my garden, so last week I had the Ivydale School Natural History Club semaphore signalling across the classroom. There is a connection … honest.These are great little spiders, very distinctive, unless you need to know

wilderness.The evening air is alive with the sewing machine whirr of grasshoppers and bush-crickets, and the distant piping of field crickets sweeps in from far-off grassy knolls and rocky outcrops. And in the morning we are engulfed in wildlife

It's cold, there's snow on the ground, and all is quiet in the garden. But I've just been outside feeding the wildlife. In my case that does not mean putting up nut-filled bird feeders or hanging fat balls, it means tipping the kitchen waste

The orb webs of the garden spider, Araneus diadematus are much in evidence as the nights get cooler, especially in the morning when their dew- or rain-covered tracery is revealed all over the bushes.It's fascinating to watch them being created first

specimen in the fox dollops that sometimes decorate my lawn, but dung beetles are not very common in my garden. So I was a bit surprised to see one in a spider web a few weeks back. It was Aphodius prodromus, at 5 or 6mm rather smaller than the huge 25

times a year. Surrounded by evergreen oak woodland it was secluded, quiet and alive with wildlife.In the evenings I was fascinated by the fireflies, much brighter than our glow-worms. This mating pair was alight although unfortunately the flashguns