August in the Wildlife-friendly Garden

Hopefully by now, your garden is full of bouncing babies - chocolatey and speckled Blackbird youngsters, sandy-coloured Starlings, troupes of insistent House Sparrow chicks following their parents, plain-faced Goldfinches looking so different to their red-faced parents.

Maybe you'll even have red-capped Great Spotted Woodpeckers coming to your feeders. Here is a grabbed snapshot of mine at the birdbath this week taken through the kitchen window - adult males would have a small red patch on the rear of the head; adult females would have an all dark crown.

And hopefully your flower beds will be humming with pollinating insects, for bumblebee populations should be pretty much at the peak right now.

Our featured Giving Nature a Home activity for August is all about feeding Hedgehogs. Autumn and early winter is the prime time for a bit of supplementary food to get them ready for hibernation, so now is a good time to get started if you have yet to do so.

Now I'm not fortunate enough to have visiting Hedgehogs, despite having put Hedgehog Highways around my boundary. These days Hedgehogs are so thinly distributed that it is a matter of luck whether you are within range of one, and maybe my proximity to a busy dual carriageway doesn't help.

However, my good friend Steve in Haywards Heath is one of the fortunate ones. He built a feeding station out of a plastic crate where he is able to feed his regular visitors, and you can see the RSPB's instructions on how to do this here, including a 1-minute video.

Steve feeds a mixture of dried meal worms (a favourite), peanuts, sultanas, sunflower hearts and dry cat food pellets (currently chicken). They are very messy eaters and Steve's garden birds grab the opportunity to pop in there early morning to tidy things up (very considerate of them).

Steve also puts out a tray of water, of course, and he has tried conventional puppy and kitten food (not fish, and not gravy) but they never touch it.

Steve also has a hedgehog house at the end of his garden - Hoggy Bottom. Now some people are sniffy about them and whether they get used, but in my experience they can be very successful, and here is one visitor to Hoggy Bottom in May this year.

 It is great to see that 390 of you have already ticked off that you are feeding Hedgehogs, and our totalisers have only been up and running for a month. If you've yet to tell us all the things you're doing in the garden, please do create a personal Log-in to our website ( and tick off those activities you've completed.

If you've yet to create a Log-in, don't worry, it's quick and simple and doesn't commit you to anything - and it would be so good to get a sense of how much nature your giving a home to across the country.