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In the classic children's book The Wind in the Willows, Mole, Ratty and Mr Toad like nothing more than spending a leisurely summer's day messing about on the river. So this Bank Holiday weekend, rather than fighting for a place to lay your towel on the beach, why not take a leaf out of their...

Mid-summer is one of my favourite times of year. But it's not the hot weather that I enjoy (it's been much too sticky lately - yuck). The warmth brings with it a bounty of amazing insects to watch and admire. This is the time to go and look for dragonflies and their smaller relatives, damselflies...

You get a call from the window, 'come quick, we've got long-tailed tits on the feeder again'. You rush over as fast as you can, but it always seems too late - they've flown off without giving you as much as a glimpse of their tails! If this sounds like your experience of 'watching'...

Crunchy leaves. Weird toadstools. Wild geese in the skies... are you enjoying autumn? I am! And you won't miss out if you try some of my top 10 ideas for things to do this season... Acorn eaters For most of the year, jays are shy. You might hear a harsh squawk or see a pink bird flying away...

Like so many other people, my interest in birds stems from watching them in my village garden when I was a kid. I spent hours and hours glued to the window, seeing what was coming and going. I hung feeders on the washing line, much to my mum's annoyance. Blue tits , blackbirds , robins , house...

It's almost a year since we dug a pond in our garden - with the wholehearted blessing of our conservation-friendly landlord. What a year it's been. I only wish I'd done it earlier. There was hard work initially, when we dug a hole measuring 3.5 m x 2.5 m, and 0.75 m deep (about 11'...

I've been feeling funny lately, and I wasn't sure why. Then, after giving it much thought, I decided on a likely cause. The joys of spring. I first heard of 'the joys of spring' as a child when watching that well-known '80s cartoon, Willo the Wisp. The one with Kenneth Williams as...

I'll admit it - I've become a terrible bore. In the three weeks since the big hole in my garden was filled with water, I've been unable to stop talking about it. I'm besotted by my new pond and its contents. Creating it wasn't easy. It took two days of hard labour by me and my mother...

Like three tiny fighter planes, they cruised menacingly past, cagily eyeing each other from afar. Suddenly, they came together in a blur of wings and engaged in a furious catfight, ending with one tumbling unceremoniously into the water. This is no tale of Battle of Britain gallantry in the skies above...