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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

is there for a gardener than the reward of having wildlife use the habitat created for them? Two pairs of blackbirds regularly dart about my lawn feeding, chasing and protecting their territory. I'm not sure where their boundaries lie or whether they're happy

woodpeckers, witnessed blackbirds and robins fighting over territory, and sat a little too close to a wasps' nest.It's generally a very good habitat for wildlife: there's a mass of ivy to provide food and shelter for all manner of creatures, and something

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

There currently appears to be the largest quantity of ladybird pupae I've ever seen in my garden. I'm not sure whether they are pupae of the standard UK ladybirds or the notorious harlequin, but they are here in force. Just the other day a friend

crab apple, hawthorn and potentilla, seem to be irresistible to our buzzing friends, as are the flowers of fennel, angelica and cow parsley, and sedums.Tubular-shaped flowers, such as foxgloves, snapdragons, penstemons and heathers, are also all

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