slowworm

Here, the top five are: Hare, Common Lizard, Otter, Slowworm and Red Kite.

260 A little black angel, no bigger than a slowworm, a tiny body with seven delicate whips (no need for wings, he's so crazily swift), and so devilishly alert, hanging in the air, the little angel, fit, casual, hyperactive, has appeared behind the cross.

On the way we found a slowworm. It was flat and stiff, completely dry.

Quiz of the Day ANSWERS: 1 Manchester; 2 MacArthur Park; 3 Bud Flanagan; 4 The slowworm; 5 The Tower of London; 6 I Wanna Do It With You; 7 Prisms; 8 David Copperfield; 9 Tesco; 10 Milan.

ANSWERS: 1 The Adriatic' 2 The slowworm' 3 John Knox' 4 David Copperfield' 5 Prisms' 6 MacArthur Park' 7 Cribbage and croquet' 8 Milan' 9 Manchester' 10 Thirty-seven.

Walking along from church to the lake afterwards, we saw either a snake or a slowworm, which was black and about 40cm long, slither along slowly in front of us.

Jones is too diffuse to cite, but Bunting illustrates exactly what I have in mind, when he writes, in Briggflats: Dung will not soil the slowworm's mosaic.

In the very Quaker silence that follows, he hears the slowworm's 'song', a section of the poem that needs to be read at Bunting's characteristically slow pace:

You may reasonably conclude that it is a sin I feel myself much inclined to, to be cured or nullified by the epicurean slowworm rather than by Alexander's heroics, though both have a place.

In common with other species of lizard, the slowworm is able to shed its tail as a defence response to help escape from predators by providing a distraction.

Lizards, slowworm and, of course, newts (about whom he wrote the definitive book Newts of the British Isles) all came into his area of expertise.

And left unchecked it will also take over grassland, threatening native species of snakes, slowworm and birds.