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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

Make a bug box for insects and give nature a helping hand within your garden. Using easy-to-find scraps of timber, old bamboo canes and old branches, it will cost you very little and provide the perfect habitat for beneficial insects such as spiders

2007 will be remembered as a very good year for wasps. But before people start complaining about their vicious stings and bad tempers, I must point out that wasps are actually our friends. After birds and spiders, they are the most important insect

off and I went out to have a look. Nothing. All very curious until I went out again on Tuesday and had a look around. There, sheltering against the recesses of the bars and grills are several small garden snails and amongst them are some garden spiders

some air flow through the house. Suddenly there were golden brown centipedes, spiders, ladybirds and lacewings running about everywhere.I felt like the man on the moon looking down on earth and witnessing a catastrophe. All the insects were enjoying

with sunbathing beasts: shieldbugs, spiders, ladybirds, bees, and two cats nestled in at the bottom. The newts have returned to the pond too; four of them were swimming about in there. These are the regular denizens of my garden, but two unusual visitors were a

woodlouse in the middle of moulting. Unlike insects and spiders, which rid the whole outer skin at once, woodlice remove first the back half, then, a few days later, the front half. This is the smooth woodlouse, Oniscus asellus, just slipping off its

. Like long-tailed tits, goldcrests eat insects and spiders, but specialise in tiny morsels such as moth eggs. Their beaks are designed to pick out insects from between pine needles. In really cold winters they will occasionally come to garden feeders, so keep

brown species. But no, the white is spider silk. This one had been caught by some arachnid, trussed up with winding threads, but had still managed to escape and crawl, shackled, across the concrete. Respect.Vine weevils go exploring at night

wildlife, they can be made into great plant food and are a surprisingly versatile ingredient in the kitchen.The nettle we're used to in the UK is Urtica dioica, a perennial plant full of iron, calcium, magnesium and nitrogen, which makes it incredibly