WHERE can you find foxes and tigers living in harmony together on just one nature reserve?

Well, it is true there cannot be many places and even when you stretch this a bit, with tiger referring to tiger beetles and foxes referring to foxgloves, there are precious few.

However, to the best of my knowledge, Habberley Valley, Kidderminster, joined this exclusive club just the other day.

Habberley Valley has always been a beautiful place florally, with its acid grassland clearings flowering with cloud-like clumps of heath bedstraw and delicate harebells.

Its sandstone cliffs are capped with a blaze of pink in high summer from the blooms of bell heather, the woods flush blue with bluebells in spring, and June has always been a month for foxgloves.

I can remember scrambling through a sea of brambles, just to get close to a clutch of foxglove blooms which were creating a splendid spectacle on the slopes leading up to Ridgestone Rock.

Usually they just flower in isolation or in small groups around the reserve, but this year they are truly amazing, with much of the younger, more sparse, areas of woodland, being filled with their blooms.

After witnessing this sight, I was in a really good mood. It is always amazing just how uplifting natural beauty can be.

On my way back to the car park my eye caught a glimpse of green - surely not. I had spent a fair few hours some weeks ago getting to know the tiger beetles of the Kidderminster heaths and this looked just like one.

If it was, it would be a first, as far as I am aware, for Habberley Valley.

Tiger beetles are extremely rare beasties which inhabit sandy soil areas and are extremely fast, ferocious predators of other insects.

Their young live in burrows with just their camouflaged heads showing as they wait to pounce on passing, unsuspecting, prey.

Needless to say, they are fascinating creatures and it would be truly special if they had somehow found their way to Habberley.

My hunt continued along the sandy paths when something green shot off the sand and up into a tuft of wavy hair grass. Slowed by the thin blades of grass it had to crawl over, I just managed to get close enough and yes, in deed, it was Habberley's first tiger.

Let us just hope this is just one of many, and this super creature will become a common sight hunting on the paths and grasslands of Habberley Valley.