Search - Articles

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

in the washing off of the line. He’s small, but perfectly formed. At 35mm, excluding the antler jaws, he is way down below the usual size spectrum of 45-60mm. I’ve only ever seen one smaller, just over 27mm, found dead in a friend’s garden in Sydenham several

of brownfields, or rather its prevention, is a difficult message to get across to architects. But I try. It is, perhaps, as difficult as the message to gardeners that tidy, well-groomed, low-maintenance gardens are not wildlife-friendly at all.And it is no good

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

zigzagging about in the gloom.A stream of small and medium-sized moths are attracted to the kitchen lights. A few come indoors to bat gently against the lights, but most seem to pass or settle on the nearby herbage. I wonder if my amphibious friend is taking

?Perhaps there is another way. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that she had sourced a muntjac carcass from the National Trust, who occasionally cull them in Hatfield Forest. She was contemplating recipes with a gusto bordering on unseemliness: “That’ll teach