A couple of days ago, I had my first encounter with a Hornet mimic hoverfly; as the name states, it's a hoverfly, mimicking a hornet.   

     Hornet Mimic Hoverfly: Nancy Brown

It’s a fly that looks like a big bee… but not quite. At first, we thought it was some sort of hornet, but it didn’t look big enough, or quite like hornets that we’d seen before. After some online research, we discovered that it was a…

UK butterflies are on the wing from late March right through till October, so there is still lots of time to see them and offer nectar rich plants in the garden.

 Red Admiral Butterfly: Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)

Gardener's world offer their top ten plants for butterflies including one of my favourite late flowering perennials: Verbena Bonariensis. It’s tall thin bluey-silvery stems poke up through everything else in the…

 As July is coming to a close and many early summer flowers have faded, it can be time to have a tidy up so that the garden doesn't start looking too "over" and brown, but it’s no means the end of summer colour!

 White tailed Bumbebee + Brimstone butterfly Kevin Sawford (rspb-images.com): Kevin Sawford (rspb-images.com)

Of course, with any garden tidy up, it's most beneficial to wildlife if some of the…

Through mid- late summer and into the autumn, some of our commonly seen dragonflies are active in areas not only near water, but also around woodland, grasslands and gardens.

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Migrant Hawker: Neil Phillips (rspb-images.com), Common Darter Female: Steve Knell (rspb-images.com), Common Darter Male, Chris Knights (rspb-images.com),  Southern Hawker: Tony Hamblin (rspb-images.com).

Keep an eye out for the Migrant Hawker, it was…

It’s all very nice snuggling up with a good book… especially with beautiful pictures of gardens and wildlife! – but a podcast can also be very informative and tells an evocative tale through sounds and atmospheres.

 Singing Robin Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)

Many people make the most of their work travelling time, exercise or relaxation time listening to podcasts, but I’m a big fan of tuning in at night…

July is the month when we see the more understated butterflies like the Meadow Brown and the Ringlet. Both are brown in colour and can be seen flying about seeking nectar even when the weather is dull and dreary rather than many other butterfly species that traditionally prefer the sunshine.

Meadow Brown butterfly: Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)

Grassland butterflies such as these need long, undisturbed grasses to lay eggs…

All the extra time in our gardens these days is wonderful for productivity and relaxation, but though gardens are continuously evolving, we are always in the same garden. Online virtual garden tours offer a change of scene, new ideas plus inspiring stories and there are so many available to view at the moment.

 Laburnham X watereri 'Vossii': Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)

The National Garden Scheme offers video t…

From Monday 29^thJune, it’s Solitary Bee Week, an initiative to promote the awareness and importance of solitary bees in the UK. Leafcutter Bee: Nick Upton (rspb-images.com)

There is lots of information on the site about behaviour and species, plus how you can get involved with activities and events.

We have over 260 bee species in our country and 90% are solitary bees. It means that they do not reside in hives or large…

As I sit outside on these beautiful warm evenings when the sky is still not black at 10.30pm, I think I’m relaxing until I hear that dreaded munching sound. It’s like a quiet, repetitive scratching scraping sound and I know what it is; slugs or snails… enjoying my young shoots that I had hoped would flourish into full plants.

 Tim Hunt (rspb-images.com)

It’s not going to happen if they are left to roam…

With today being the summer solstice; our longest day when sundown is just after 9.20pm, it’s the perfect time to spend the evening in the garden.

 Nightjar: Paul Sawer (rspb-images.com)

A time when we might actually down tools and plans and just stop for a while to revel in the sights, smells and sounds of the garden. As nightfall slowly descends, our sense of smell and hearing increase over sight as colours and visual…

The grassland wildlfowers really hit their stride this month. I love their names, a list of them reads like some ancient poetry, the meaning of which has been lost in time: black medick, burdock, greater birdsfoot trefoil, vetch, knapweed  cornfield poppies, oxeye daisies, hawkbit, wild carrot, red clover, white clover, tare,  there are so many to discover.

 Field Poppies: Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)

These wild grassy habitat…

Roses are surely some of the most iconic of all flowers and conjure up images of the typically beautiful old fashioned English garden brimming with charm.

New Dawn Rose: Nancy Brown

The huge variety of specimens offer something for almost every type of garden situation whether you’re looking for something cute and compact for a pot, a medium or large bushy plant for the border, a hedge or an enormous climber.

They…

Through the summer months, dragonflies will be emerging as winged adults from their larval form.Common Hawker emerging: Genevieve Leaper (rspb-images.com)

Unlike butterflies, they don’t go through a pupa /chrysalis stage with a hard exterior. When the days are long and the temperature is right, dragonfly larva crawl out of the water to spend a few days adjusting to breathing air before their final moult into the adult…

Gardens in East Anglia can start getting really thirsty at this time of year. This year’s spring has turned out to be the sunniest on record for the UK. Great for enjoying the outdoors and catching up in the garden but not so good for many plants, wild animals and crops.

 Roses, peonies and cirsium: Nancy Brown

We can see that our gardens are dry so many of us are out watering in the early evenings. There are ways…

On a dog walk recently, I came across a chance and delightful discovery; drawn to the high pitched squeaking, I peered inside: community.rspb.org.uk/.../7563.2251.2262.1588.4064.8233.0447.1462.Nestlings-shorter-touch5.7_5F00_1.mp4Blue tit nest: Nancy Brown

...to discover these blue-tit nestlings inside an outdoor tap box. Usually nests are built high up or deep within foliage, as far away from predators as possible but this…

In the UK, there are 59 species of butterfly but approximately 2,500 species of Moth!

Buff-tip Moth: Nancy Brown       Cinnabar Moth: Nancy Brown

Famous for being night flyers, many actually fly during the day or both. As well as being as beautiful in colour and design as our butterflies, Moths are also the masters of disguise and some have incredible camouflage markings that look just the same as bark and leaves.

Children,…

We will hopefully be seeing more Bumblebees in our gardens through May and June as their colonies establish.

Carder Bumblebee: Richard Bedford (rspb-images.com)

Their homes are not the smart, orderly hexagonal style of the honeybee’s, it’s much more of an ad-hoc and messy clump of cavities that store their food; quite an extraordinary structure if you ever come across one tucked away in the ground or some sort of cavity…

As well as this week celebrating the Chelsea Flower Show, it is also Mental Health Awareness Week.

Ray Kennedy (rspb-images.com)

The benefits of gardening and nature on mental health are well documented but why do they improve our mood or make us feel better after some time immersed in them? 

Gardens and nature are relaxing. They take us away from the digital world and away from our stressful situations. When we are actively…

It’s Chelsea Flower Show week!

Although there is no actual “show” this year, there is lots to see online at Virtual Chelsea 2020.

Poppy: Jodie Randall (rspb-images.com),     Tulip Tulipa sp: Sue Kennedy (rspb-images.com)

The BBC is also still airing a live programme at 8pm Monday to Friday with Monty Don and Joe Swift from their gardens at home looking back at many Chelsea highlights. Last night (Monday 1…

Nettles are not the gardener’s favourite wild plant when trying to create beauty in a garden!

Comma Butterfly. Sue Kennedy (rspb-images.com)

They are robust perennials that seed and spread in seemingly any aspect and soil. Although we may want to remove them from our borders, leaving them to grow in certain areas of the garden can offer great benefits to wildlife, and to us.

Nettles provide perfect habitat for Comma…

Dragonflies can begin to emerge as early as April. In the UK, we have 36 Species of Dragonfly and 21 species of Damselflies, both from the insect order Odonata.

Male Broad-bodied Chaser Dragonfly: Ernie Janes (rspb-images.com)

Two ways to tell the difference are with regard to wings and eyes: at rest, Damselflies have their wings upright, as butterflies do when they rest on a flower but dragonfly wings are left open, horizontal…

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week!

David Tipling (rspb-images.com)

It’s organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society to raise awareness of Hedgehogs and their behaviour, the difficulties they face and how we can help.

Last night, I could hear some rather loud huffing and puffing from my neighbour’s garden here in Suffolk and after a bit of research, concluded that this was the hedgehog mating ritual…

May is a really busy month for garden birds as many are in the full swing of their breeding season in one way or another. They could be busy building nests, incubating eggs or already looking for extra food for their chicks.

David Tipling (rspb-images.com)

“Busy” incubating eggs? Surely that’s just a matter of sitting on them?    Incubation can actually require a lot of attention and effort throughout the…

This week is National Garden week and typically, the rain is coming down! It may not inspire us to be out there for hours on end right now but after all our recent sunshine, the rain is much needed by our plants, crops and wildlife.

Interestingly, I dug my spade into the earth and it came out with moisture on it from the top to the tip so these two days of fairly light rain are really having an impact and getting down…

One of the butterflies we see in abundance during April at Flatford is the cheery orange-tip butterfly having emerged from its chrysalis around this time.

David Kjaer (rspb-images.com)

The male butterfly is the one with the orange-tip, but the female is more of a “grey-tip”. She’s easy to identify as she also has the distinct dot on each fore-wing and a dark body.

They particularly like to lay their little…