CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

Butterbur Petasites hybridus is a wonderful source of nectar and pollen for bees in spring - especially honeybees. These were feeding on t...

Two days ago we had snow on the ground and freezing winds. Then the thaw arrived. Today, at mid-da...

Wildlife gardening evangelists frequently exhort us to plant native species in our gardens - quite rightly, as there are indeed many native...

One of the pleasures of macrophotography is that you tend to notice things in the captured image that you'd never be aware of otherwise....

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about the close link between scent and memory, about the way in which a whiff of a natural odour can...

If I had any sense I'd probably have dug out the dandelions in the gardens long before now because they seed themselves so prolifically,...

Any doubts that spring had finally arrived were dispelled yesterday by a honeybee trapped in our greenhouse (and safely liberated) ......

Columbines are awkward flowers for bees to visit. They can reach the pollen by hanging from the stamens that dangle from bel...

Yesterday we found about 20 honeybees dead in the snow near some hives in Durham City, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that some ne...

Japanese knotweed Fallopia japonica tops the table of alien, introduced plants that have become invasive weeds in Britain. Its phenomena...

The first time I saw one of these bees with a distinctive band of white hairs along its thorax I spent some time leafing through field guid...

Naturalists tend to be obsessed with rarities but it’s the common species that are the foundation of all ecosystems. The billions of dandeli...