CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

  Garden snails Cornu aspersa mating. One of the reasons garden snails are so successful is that they are hermaphrodite. In animals with se...

  We witnessed a titanic battle between an unfortunate bumblebee and a female garden spider  Araneus diadematus  that had spun her web on th...

  A pair of wolf spiders courting in the garden, with the male (in the foreground) frantically signalling his amorous intentions to her wit...

  I watched this pair of dippers courting along a stretch of the river Wear near Wolsingham in Weardale earlier this week. It's very dif...

  This lovely peacock butterfly must have found its way into the house, unnoticed, during the very mild weather last October, and has been h...

You know that spring has really sprung when you witness this kind of bird behaviour. There were three lapwings in this o...

Thousands of fieldfares, arriving from Scandinavia and Russia, have passed through Weardale over the last few weeks, gorging themselves wit...

Some interesting behaviour from juveniles herring gulls. These birds soon learn that the easiest way to break into bivalve mollusc shells...

We spent a fascinating afternoon recently watching dragonfly behaviour at Ashes quarry at Stanhope in Weardale. The mos...

Although some spiders have a fearsome reputation, there’s no denying that others have endearing qualities – and none more so than the nurse...

This little beauty is Metellina segmentata and she's spun her rather untidy web between the developing flower h...

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary is about an encounter with snipe on Chapel Fell in Weardale. Usually the first hin...