This seasonal submission from a Ranger's Blog reader suggests a new historical and literary way to play the traditional game of conkers. All suggestions for variant rules will be considered!

William Duke of Normandy was quite content in France playing 'Conkers" with local dignitaries. However in 1065 during a severe storm, his last chestnut tree was struck by lightening and died. It is for this reason that in 1066 he invaded England, as England was reputed to posses the finest Conkers. This is why today William I is also known as William the Conkerer.

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The BBC fixes tiny video cameras to raptors with impressive results. See a peregrine falcon perform 150mph dives, and 10g turns off a cliff; and extraordinary scenes as a goshawk flies at ground level through dense woodland.

Looks familiar?

By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardeners have been out mushroom foraging again. But this time we also solved a potentially deadly mystery. You’ll remember the ‘funny little grey Halma-piece shaped mushrooms’ in ‘Cep this way...’ ?

These were so bizarre that I sent a picture of them to the wonderful John Wright, resident mycologist at River Cottage and author of Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook No.1. I saw John give a talk about wild mushrooms at the Taste of London Expo a few years ago, and he has patiently replied to my fungal emails ever since.

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Good news, you can catch a seagull without putting salt on its tail!

We still don't know if this works with pigeons.

EDIT: Apparently not.

Wasps! Urgh! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing! Well, you'd think so by the amount of cursing they get around this time of year. People really don't like wasps, but wasps can't resist coming to have a look at - and taste of - the interesting things people like to do outside. So conflict inevitably ensures... or at least a lot of flapping about and yelling.

But something the Ranger recently spotted at a local market just might hold a solution for the age-old impasse between irate human and yellow-jacketed hymenopteran.

What is this bizarre thing? And what has it to do with wasps?

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By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardeners have had enough of cutting mixed hedgerows. We want to get out. It’s September, it has been raining, it’s warm, it must be time for mushrooms!

We headed to woodlands on the Surrey/Kent border where we had surreptitiously followed a wicker-basket-and-knife-bearing German couple last year. And we were not disappointed. The first fungi were entertaining rather than edible. Just what are these funny little grey Halma-piece shaped mushrooms?

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A perennial question on this site's extremely popular Ask the Ranger facility is "Where do spiders go in the winter?" (So much so that the answer is given on the same page and can be found here).

At this time of the year, however, more direct approaches to The Ranger are common, as spiders start appearing indoors all over the place and startled home-owners seek advice from their nearest spider enthusiast. So The Ranger was prepared when Naturenet designer Cat posed the question "Where do spiders come from in the autumn?", or, more specifically, why is Cat's flat filling up with spiders?

The spiders use Cat's bath more than she does!

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10:10 is a movement of people, schools, businesses and organisations cutting their carbon by 10% in a year. Lizzie Gillett abandoned a successful TV career to head this organisation - find out why here.