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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

easily have been in part of the Weald. But the wildlife reflected its slightly more southerly location, the Departement Mayenne between Normandy and the Loire.There were plenty of painted lady and clouded yellow butterflies, the speckled woods were

in Britain. Although there are about 250 species of hoverfly in the UK, and roughly 100 of them are black and yellow wasp mimics, this one is immediately recognizable by its narrow parallel-sided body shape and the fact that some abdominal segments have two

.I had quite happily (and rather pompously I’m sorry to say) stated that these lovely insects were never a problem in the garden, because, although they are sap suckers, they prefer wild flowers to cultivated plants. Boy did I get that wrong. I was given

animals are transient, they come, they go; but wild plants ... they come, they stay, they get in the way, they interfere, and they compete with the flowers and vegetables we choose to grow. I think this attitude to 'weeds' is grossly unfair, so here

off. The densest is our tree of Oven's wattle, Acacia pravissima, now a huge impenetrable cushion of yellow flowers dominating the end of the garden. Part of the HFW scheme is a series of garden surveys and I've had more luck with April birds than

amongst the bramble bushes, and the occasional clouded yellow belts up the path at top bluster speed.The air is thick with dumbledors buzzing lazily over the flowers; these shiny bluish, greenish or sometimes even pinkish Geotrupes are shinier than

it has run a bit wild and it's a dumping ground for flower pots, buckets, pieces of wood that I once thought could be potentially useful for some reason, mildly interesting boulders found on family walks and all not very well hidden by a brightly coloured

clunking clockwork model of a beetle, it'll be feeding on the white or yellow bedstraws, drifts of which stain the surrounding fields.Sunday 8th Lizards are everywhere sunning themselves on walls and steps; everywhere we walk they are disturbed from