The Ranger's friends at Gift to Nature have come up with a great idea to promote bee-friendly gardening, and raise some funds for their worthy project to support the Isle of Wight's nature.

They've given us here at Naturenet a couple of samples of their new beewicks; intriguing-looking things which they cleverly made themselves:

So, what are these, and how do they save bees? Read on to find out.

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How often will you found something useful at a car-boot sale? Well, for once The Ranger did. When I came home clutching a little box called 'Find the Fault' I was fully prepared to have wasted £1.

But inside was a parlour game from what looks like the 1920s or 30s, which actually proved to be quite entertaining. This was one of several published in the Dennis 'Dainty' series, coming in a little cardboard box with cards and a sheet of answers inside. Apparently there were forms for players to use originally, but in our box these were all gone. Perhaps not surprising after eighty years. The cards were also a little the worse for wear, having evidently been taped to a wall at some point, and also been pinned up with drawing pins. Luckily, the wonders of Photoshop can wash away the years, and you can now enjoy them as they were when new.

We had family and friends visiting over the bank holiday weekend, and between us we found plenty of gentle entertainment in this hoary old game. So it only seemed right to share it with you.

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By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

It’s not often The Wildlife Gardener finds something that neither she nor The Ranger can identify. So we are sending out an NOS (Name Our Snail) request to Naturenet readers. While out walking near a mill pond I spotted several of these snails crawling all over cow parsley:
Caption:

What on earth is it?

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Washing up on Isle of Wight beaches - and indeed much of the south coast - have been a few bedraggled Portuguese man o' war. They caused a bit of a flurry of interest as for once, these things actually could hurt someone, and so need to be treated with care. A couple of (more or less) live ones were rescued and sent to Fort Victoria Marine Aquarium, where they've been a big hit with the public.

But there's a problem, which I came across whilst writing the press release warning people of the animals. It's even more taxing than the question of the best treatment for man o' war stings. What is the correct plural term for Portuguese man o' war?

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The Ranger's fond of reading Ben Goldacre's Guardian column 'Bad Science'. It features regular and entertaining debunking of scientific inaccuracy, health scares, pseudoscience and quackery.

Ben normally aims his precision-targeted criticism at the biggest targets, so he probably won't draw your attention to the following example of one poor deluded woman fighting for her rights:

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