The Bumper Book of Nature by Stephen Moss

1) To find out what animals roam around your local woods or garden you can make a plaster cast of their tracks. Which common urban animal makes a track like this: Question 1

2) In the spring the pond comes to life. The most recognisable kind of spawn is that of a frog. Only a small percentage of the spawn becomes frogs, but how many eggs on average does a frog lay?

Correct! Bluebell – Our favourite wild flower, and justly so. The delicate purplish-blue flowers appear from April into June, depending on location, and produce one of our greatest natural spectacles

4) Wildlife loves a compost heap especially reptiles, slugs, snails, hedgehogs and minibeasts. But when making a compost heap which of these should you avoid putting in:

Correct! Seeds – you should avoid anything that grows

Correct! A rabbit – it is found all over lowland Britain – living together in networks of tunnels known as warrens.

6) Autumn is a great time to discover nature – and also win a conker fight. But do you know when the first game of conkers took place:

Correct! 1848 was the first recorded game of conkers. The ‘conker’ may derive from ‘conqueror’ – referring to a winning nut,; or it may come from the French work ‘cogner’, meaning to hit or bash

Correct! The Cuckoo. So why do cuckoos do this? The answer is simple. By taking no part in the raising of their offspring, female cuckoos can lay up to twenty-five eggs – far more than they could ever hope to hatch and raise if they did all the work themselves.

Correct! 3 – the grass snake, smooth snake and adder

10) Owl pellets are produced because owls eat their dinner whole and their body can’t digest the meal whole. But what are the pellets made up of?