Search - Articles

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

Visiting an old friend in West Dulwich last week I saw the first damselfly of the season. I wasn't quick enough to see which, but it was a male of either the common blue damsel (Enallagma cyanthigerum), pictured below, or the azure (Coenagrion

I though the four-year-old and his friend were being noisy on the trampoline, but they were not the source of the shrill screaming last Friday. It was about 2.30 in the afternoon and the wild shouts suddenly stopped as a sparrowhawk screeched over

. Such is the downward-looking microcosm-centred world of the entomologist. So for me to notice our avian friends they have to be really really abundant and noisy and obvious.Well, this week they have been particularly keen to draw attention to themselves. It started

The doorbell went on Sunday afternoon and on the doorstep was a friend wearing some unusual ornamentation on his jumper - a living broach. He and his family had been walking down the road, when they discovered a huge dragonfly struggling

I think it’s going to be a good year for stag beetles in East Dulwich. On May 16th there were three flying around in the evening, two males and a female. Then on the 29th I found the chap, pictured left, buzzing about as I was bringing

at first look unappealing and unattractive, they are nevertheless home to 12–14 per cent of all our red data book and nationally scarce insect species; that’s more than you find in ancient woodlands or on chalk downs.The reason they are so important

Paris, for an old school friend's birthday party. I've got a couple of hours on Sunday morning before the Eurostar home, so where better than a park to sit and watch the sights? I'm on the east side of the city, between the Bastille and Nation so it

I'm just back from a weekend visiting an old friend in Banwell, near Weston-Super-Mare. Always envious of his rambling house and large walled garden, we got to talking over garden wildlife and the troubles of traipsing fox dung through the kitchen

and they then point it out to some of their friends. They gain a modicum of kudos from knowing a 'hawk' when they see one.Then it drifts away over the buildings and is gone. Well I never. I know it's a common bird, but I usually associate it with roadsides rather than