London photographer Simon Lee spent a few months this year walking by a block of flats at the Elephant and Castle, on his daily commute. Perronet House is a social housing block in south-east London, and Simon was so taken by his regular encounters with what he describes as "some of the most defiant littering" that he decided to document it online.

On his Flickr stream he's collated over 80 images of the same spot, each day, and the junk that people leave there. It's an intriguing, and quite compelling glimpse into the mundane; and multiplied eighty-fold, makes a real impression of the impact our throwing-away habit can have on a public place.

Simon says of the area:

Elephant and Castle isn't very salubrious. It's mainly known for being a set of large roundabouts (with bus connections to just about everywhere in London) which has somewhat intimidating subways, big estates and a pretty bleak shopping centre. The block of flats that this fly-tipping takes place against is fairly large but the street that this bit of it is on has opposite it a row of nice terraced houses. Like anywhere in London walking two minutes can make a big difference.

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Thinking of buying some presents? Here's a festive game with a charitable bent - and it's got a goat in it! Baa!

By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

Last weekend, la famille Wildlife Gardener left the windswept trees of Surrey for... the windswept trees of Cambridge. And spectacular trees they were: one in particular, hidden away in the Fellow’s Garden of Emmanuel College – Xerxes’ plane.

We all know and love London planes, (Platanus x hispanica), those pavement-bound, fume-absorbing uprights lining roads in towns and cities. But there is another species, the oriental plane (Platanus orientalis) that grows well in southern England, and the wonderful plane tree at Emmanuel is one of these.

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Red squirrels, the little furry darlings - they need our help! Yes, if about fifty million column-inches are to be believed then we can all join in to help fight the introduction of grey squirrels and the decline of the native red. It's suggested that by keeping the grey terror at bay in the north of England maybe we English can keep a population of our red friends. A great deal of money and effort has been spent on trying to do just that. At the same time money for other species conservation efforts has come under increasing pressure, so perhaps it's not a bad thing that Natural England have published a report from some heavyweight scientists to see if the resources expended on red squirrel conservation in northern England have been well-used. The results make uncomfortable reading.

Whilst it's not all bad news, it seems that not everything is going very well - and the problem isn't just the grey squirrels but also the people. The report has some rather blunt suggestions, and some people are not going to like it.

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By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardener read an interesting article in New Scientist recently. It makes the astonishing observation that, in terms of carbon footprint, you are better off running a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser than keeping a medium-sized dog.

It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kg of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate 1 kg of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares.

Meanwhile... a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser ... driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.

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By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

Phwoar! The Wildlife Gardener has at last got herself some thigh-high rubber:

This means that I can now get thigh-deep and give the Wildlife Pond the jolly good slubbing out it deserves. For now is that window of cleaning-out opportunity between the newts leaving the pond to hibernate and the frogs going in to do the same thing. There’s never a good time to clear out an established wildlife pond, but now is probably the least damaging in terms of the numbers of creatures in there.

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Invert charity Buglife has published the results of its autumn Spider Survey, and managed to garner a few column inches. As ever, it's instructive to see just how the spider is presented - and received.

So let's start with the easy shots, shall we? You've probably noticed one already in the picture above: Louise Gray, the Telegraph's environment correspondent, gets her name under a headline saying in one breath both 'spiders' and 'insects':

Every home in Britain has at least 30 spiders crawling around, according to the first national survey of the insects.

I think I'll just pass over 'crawling around' - it's just not worth my bother. But, for anyone still wondering, my beef with this slovenly sub-editing is that spiders are no more insects than humans are birds.

But wait, there's more. I'm going to get the glaring errors out of the way first, so we can see the subtler ones.

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