Logs tend to get all the headlines when it comes to giving nature a home with deadwood, but I’m here to shout out for the humble stick. On its own, it may not be much, but with a load of its friends, it can make a great habitat.
What a stick pile can do is provide a tangled maze into which cats, Magpies and other large predators can’t go. That makes it a perfect hideaway for birds such as Blackbirds, Robins, Wrens and Dunnocks, and it is a great place for them to build their nests when safe sites can be in such short supply in gardens.
It is the kind of feature you can build up bit by bit, month by month, whenever you do a bit of pruning or tidying up around the garden. Given that it is February now, it will soon be last-chance saloon for getting any hedges and bushes pruned before the breeding season. It then saves you having to burn it, shred it or put it in the green bin. And by giving your stick pile its own place in the garden, you can keep the garden neat and good for wildlife at the same time.
In my garden, I tuck my stick pile away in a corner, not because the stick pile is ugly, but it just makes it even more of a hidden sanctuary. I have Field Voles nesting underneath it, and I like to think it is a safe refuge for everything from Frogs to beetles.
I also tuck Wren nestboxes behind it to give them even more options.
You might even like to grow something that will clamber over it, like Old Man’s Beard.
Altogether, it's one new home for wildlife that could otherwise have gone up in smoke!
PS Don't forget Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend!
If you want to drop by my RSPB wildlife gardening blog, it is updated every Friday, and I'd love to see you there - www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/hfw