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and suburban London about 100 years ago. It was something of an exciting wildlife spectacle. Writing in 1909, Charles Dixon describes the rapidly increasing gull expansion into the capital in his popular book Birdlife of London. He is rather bemused

Today on a fencepost, I saw the beautiful angular art-deco prize of an angle Shades, Phlogophora meticulosa. This wonderful moth is immediately recognizable and unmistakable, even though its colours vary across a whole spectrum of browns, beiges, pinks and yellowy greens.The nond...

In the Horniman Museum Gardens earlier today and a brightly coloured butterfly caught my eye as it visited a low dandelion flower. I skulk up to it and discover a painted lady, Cynthia cardui. This is only the third I have seen this year.A native of North Africa and Southern Euro...

Walking back from the Horniman Museum last week took me past a large oaktree growing just inside a front garden. The tree looks like an old pollardand must pre-date the early 20th century houses hereabouts. What caught myattention were all the broken knopper galls lying on the pa...

It's two years now since the ring-necked parakeets started screeching over the garden. The tallest trees around here are the Lombardy poplars a few doors down. I don't think they are nesting in them though, they don't look old enough to have the right sized holes in which the bir...

Our tomatoes have not done very well this year, a combination of slow start and inadequate watering whilst we were away on holiday. But further down the street someone has done much better. They've obviously had a glut because a cardboard box on the front garden wall is full of s...

It's ten to nine on a weekday morning and the start of the last week of school. It's only a short walk to school and there is always the opportunity of peering over fences and hedges to see what else is going on in other people's gardens in the neighbourhood.Not much is roused in...

At certain times of the year, as I look out over my back garden, I see a huge heron perched on the chimney stacks of the next street. It's an infrequent, but fairly regular visitor and I often wonder what is attracting it. Our garden pond, up and running now that I've replaced th...

At 11 o'clock in the morning, the bowl of Bob-the-Builder pasta shapes was either a late second breakfast, or an early first lunch - whatever, it was interrupted by the announcement from nearly-three-year-old: "Look, there's a magpie". Sure enough there, chattering loudly in the ...

to the serenity of the place.So I was very pleased to see a pair of goldfinches this morning. I'm not a birdwatcher, but even I know the unmistakable red face, white sideburns and yellow wing flash of these pretty creatures. They were not in my 'wildlife haven