Secret Lives of Garden Wildlife - Tapa dura

There is no wildlife closer to us than that found in our gardens - or indeed, in our houses - so it follows that many of those creatures we love, such as foxes and ladybirds, are literally household names. However, despite this familiarity, many of the characters reveal surprising lifestyles if you take a closer look, and there is more going on in our precious backyards that we might imagine. Did you know that slugs and snails have spine-tingly good sex; that mosquitoes can dodge raindrops and that Grey Squirrels have regular sleepovers with their neighbours? Did you realise that unemployment causes the breakdown of society in wasps, or that it takes the average spider only one hour to build a web from scratch? Perhaps it would even surprise you to know that, in this day and age, it is still possible to have three Old Ladies stuck in your lavatory? (They are moths.) Written in an engaging style and illustrated with photographs and stunning colour paintings by Peter Partington, this book reveals, month by month, the extraordinary hidden world of our most familiar garden wildlife. You will never look at your garden neighbours in the same way again.

Dominic Couzens has monthly columns in BBC Wildlife and Birdwatching magazines and writes for the National Trust magazine, Birds magazine and BBC Gardener's World. Peter Partington's painting is widely admired. Previous publications include the two forerunners in this series, The Secret Lives of Garden Birds and Secret Lives of British Birds.