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, three came along at once.A green-veined white, Pieris napi, was the first to appear, fluttering down to examine the mock orange flowers. This is probably the most widespread of the ‘cabbage’ whites, since it occurs commonly throughout the British Isles

, as a quilt of whiteness. But the deepening gloom as the sun goes down is not as empty as it might first appear. There are things out, but they are moving slowly and cautiously.A pair of magpies cough their way through the Leyland cypress a few doors

A short while ago I was driving past Peckham Rye, when my eye was caught by a series of white halos on the grass under some of the trees. It looked as if several small snow storms had targeted some of the larger and more handsome specimens across

, the feather or flower balls swung on strings by Polynesian dancers. For nearly three minutes, they circled round and round each other, always keeping about 10-15 cm apart, as if they were connected by some invisible, but unbreakable, thread.It's difficult

that they should have turned it up.The bug's range expansion started long before its Atlantic crossing. Until 1950 it was confined West of the Rockies, but in 1956 had been accidentally transported to Iowa. During the 1980s and 1990s it rapidly colonized the north

When the swifts first returned on May 2nd there were only three or four of them. Last year we had a huge gang of about 15, wheeling in the sky and screaming down the street at top speed, just above the lamp-posts. I always take these wonderfully

savoury plant in the beds, it also grows very well in cracks in the old concrete path.Later, while I'm admiring the constant nectaring business, I see there are several species. The red-tailed, Bombus lapidarius, is there in numbers, as too is the white

was solved a couple of days later when I watched a bird delicately pick bright red berries from an ornamental shrub down in Purley. I made a few notes: grey head, dark cheek patch, reddish brown wings, pale grey breast, brownish bib, white side flecks, pale

wing-tip to wing-tip is striped orange and white and quite pretty under a lens.It had been spreading across Europe from its first discovery in Macedonia in the middle of the 20th century and arrived in the UK in Wimbledon in 2002. I first noticed

everywhere. A few years ago I cleared out the small window boxes of the dead and dying plants that were clearly not doing very well. All I found, instead of roots, were lots of these small (7-8mm) creamy white maggots — vine weevil grubs.The adult weevils