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, I stressed. So long as the cats did not see it, it would find its own way back to some suitable shelter.Despite our pond housing a successful smooth newt colony, we have never had frogs breeding in it. They do climb into the water, and one year we

It was blisteringly cold on Sunday, and the water butts were frozen over, but it was not a deep frost. So repairing and replacing the raised beds up at the allotment was relatively easy. The old scaffold planks we put in four or five years ago have

have a virtually water-proof skin based on the carbohydrate/protein mix of chitin, woodlice are still using an evolutionarily rather antiquated formula based on calcium carbonate, the main constituent of chalk.My pictures are really just an excuse

first thought were dark lines of silt washed along the high water mark were actually strand lines of dead insects. I listed over 100 species, including many beetles, but the vast majority were the winged male and female black ants. I tried to do a rough

My lawn is bone dry. I keep putting off watering it because it's autumn for goodness sake and it should rain soon. It's looking a bit brown, but I know it will recover fine with the first precipitation. The clouds, however, tenaciously hang

actually), which presumably climbed back into the water after a dry, under-log hibernation, during that brief sunny spell at the beginning of the month.The seasonal cycling of weather, day length, and temperature, may seem pretty extreme to modern humans

corticale. The disease is particularly prevalent in small to medium-sized trees during times of water stress, and this summer has been dry enough to see a resurgence in south-east London. There has been speculation that grey squirrels may have something

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

across the water surface, and the newts are in full-flow courtship below.Blackbirds and thrushes are working double-time on the lawn and the local woodpigeons seem constantly out of breath, they are so busy.But for me, the highlight of the last few days

, and they are the flecks of white that litter a rather water-logged Dulwich Park and Peckham Rye as I take a year-end cycle round my local manor.Today, no-one bats an eye at them, but things were not always so. Black-headed gulls only started to appear in urban