Now here's a group of birds that can really get heads scratching when it comes to Big Garden Birdwatch: the gulls.

Many of you I know have them on your roofs, some of you have them in your garden, and any schools doing the Big Schools Birdwatch have probably got squadrons of them on their playing fields.

So I thought a quick introduction to them would be timely!

I'm going to start with the headlines:

• there…

So you sit down for Big Garden Birdwatch, nice and comfy, pen and notepad in hand ready to jot down the maximum number of each species you see, when you see something fossicking about in the border. What is it?

Unlike the lovely illustrations in the field guide sat next to you, the bird is rather distant so you can't see all the detail. In fact, it's not even facing you. How frustrating!

You then see another…

Having safely navigated into the New Year, I thought I'd take a moment to look back at what hit the headlines in 2017 that affects us as wildlife-friendly gardeners.

Wildlife and pesticides

Concern about the impact that pesticides are having on pollinating insects got even stronger in 2017. Much of this is to do with agricultural chemicals, but a study by The University of Sussex and The University of Padova tested…

Here we are, on the threshold of a brand new year, and that means Big Garden Birdwatch is zooming up. Four weeks to go and counting until half a million people all play their part in the biggest bird survey in the world…

I’m sure many of you feed birds throughout the winter and probably year-round – and good on you if that is the case. Nevertheless, now seems a great time to check if you’re ready for the big weekend…

So another year is coming to its conclusion, with hopefully more nature saved than lost.

I always like to have a look back and see how things have gone in my garden this year.

It started frosty but the new turf seemed to have taken well around the pond, with more beds dug ready for flowers.

Sparrowhawks have continued to visit daily, with even this intrepid bird skating over to my solar fountain in the cold snap…

Over the past few weeks, I have been spending just a few minutes every week raking up the leaves as they drop.

It's not essential to do it, but if the leaves lie about on the grass, they can create bald patches, and I don't want them clogging the pond when they can get a bit stinky and turn the water brown with their tanins.

So I just pop them in a big collecting bucket and then tip them into my leaf bin.

I know that Christmas is coming because, this week, my garden has been playing host to some birds that come from Santa's homeland. (I know there's some dispute about where Santa lives, but as far as I'm concerned it is northern Scandinavia).

They arrived on a grizzly dark winter's day, perching up high in my myrtle tree. I wouldn't normally post rubbish photos, but the reality is that this is how we often…

Presents to buy, parties to organise, food to cook, relatives to entertain…..I probably don't need to remind you that Christmas is coming!

It doesn’t leave you much time to spend in the garden, but just spending a few minutes out there might be what you need to relieve some of the stress.

So I’ve come up with 12 things that are easy to do in the garden in the run-up to Christmas, which you can mix and…

Last weekend, something happened in my garden that had never happened before: I caught all my birds.

I should explain. A colleague and all round good-egg, Rich, and his lovely dad Peter came round to 'ring' the birds in my garden.

I'm sure that many of you are familiar with bird ringing, but if not, it is a technique in which very fine nets (called 'mist nets') are slung between two poles.

Birds…

Once in a while, I bring you a blog that is little more than a set of photos, because nature sometimes speaks for itself.

Today's is of a Sparrowhawk. He had just finished bathing in my pond, which is thrilling enough in itself, but on this occasion he decided to come and sit in a myrtle tree outside my bedroom window. (I originally thought it was a female based on the brown colouring, but have since discovered it is…

Ok, here's a little challenge for you. Just  a few weeks ago, I was noseying around in a bush in a friend's garden, when I suddenly realised that something was looking back at me.

See if you can find it.

I moved into another position to get a different view. Now there were two things looking at me.

Have you worked out what they are yet?

Here's a close up of one of them in case you need a better view.…

On a recent trip to the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley gardens in Surrey, I was pleased to see their trial of wildlife-friendly hanging baskets.

Before I show you the pictures, remember this is late autumn - they were not looking their best!

In fact, let's start you off with their information board about it all, to show you how seriously they have been taking it:

You can see that their focus has been…

Last week, I was fortunate enough to spend a few nights in Norfolk, enjoying long, head-emptying and soul-filling walks on the beaches and marshes.

The little flint-clad holiday cottage I stayed in had a bijou garden that I was pleased to find still had things to commend it for wildlife. It had well-stocked little flower borders with herbs, and climbers such as honeysuckles growing up the fence, ripe with berries.

I reckon there is a good chance that this autumn you will have had the pleasure of seeing a Red Admiral. Or two. Or twenty.

While many of our butterflies have been struggling in recent years, at least this beauty has had a good year, and recently they have been on the wing in numbers.

They are found either sunning themselves, or feeding on Ivy, ripe blackberries, Buddleia x weyeriana (the yellow one), juicy windfall…

Do kids still sing the 'One man went to mow' song these days? I do hope so. It was a staple song on school coach trips in my youth, and is a wonderful throw-back to days of yore when harvesting the hay would have been something that all the locals turned out to do.

Well, I'm one step closer to being a man who goes to mow, with the sowing this week of a haymeadow...in my garden.

A meadow needs to be as infertile…

This week, I had chance to drop in for a short while to the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley in Surrey, their flagship garden.

Indulging my fascination for which plants work best for wildlife, I always like to pop down to the trial beds, because there you get to see lots of types of a particular kind of plant and compare them in action.

One of the trials underway at the moment is of 'pot mums' - bushy, flower…

Autumn is famed for its vibrant dashes of colour, so I headed out into my garden this week to see how the season's palette is progressing.

We think of spring as a prime time for yellows, but flower borders in autumn can still cling on to summer's blooms right into October or early November, so it wasn't hard to find yellows, such as this Rudbeckia lacinata, great for bees)...

...and Californian Poppies…

A few weeks ago I praised... (take a deep breath)...dandelions.

Today, is the turn of another native plant that is not especially loved, the Common Hogweed, that familiar upright white flower of road verges and hedgerows

Before I go any further, I need to be clear that I am not talking the Invasive Non-native Species called Giant Hogweed, which should be avoided at all costs. Growing to 3 metres tall and incredibly…

You know you like a little bit of a teaser, so here's today's game: spot the wildlife in the Ivy... There is something in there, I promise.

Hopefully you found the Chiffchaff lurking in there. (If it eluded you, the answer is at the end of the blog).

Here he is out in the open, having a whale of a time among all the insects that are attracted now the Ivy is in flower.

Much of the insect life he isn't interested…

After a very busy week, please excuse me doing a very visual blog.

You see, my RSPB day-job got kind of hectic this week with the news that the planning application had been withdrawn which would have plonked 5,000 houses all over the best site in the UK for the threatened Nightingale (cheer!). But a new application is apparently threatened (boo!). You can see my thoughts about that here.

The week was made even busier…

With my start-of-the-month blog now linking to the main RSPB e-newsletter (which is now known as Notes on Nature), I'll be bringing you a little wrap-up of what's happening in the world of garden wildlife.

I'll be sharing a bit about what I've been getting up to, giving my predictions of what you will see in your garden this month, and suggesting some of the things you might like to do to help wildlife where…

If you want to help wildlife in your garden, should you plant native plants? It's one of those long-standing questions that is an important part of wildlife-friendly gardening. Some would say, "Of course you need to grow native plants. It's obvious!". Others would say, "But some non-native plants are great for wildlife, and some native plants are not".

Add into that the fact that some native…

I've been trying my own little trials this year of annual seed mixes to see if I can grow a better mix for pollinators. The traditional 'native cornfield mix' of Field Poppy, Corncockle, Corn Marigold and Corn Chamomile can be beautiful, but it doesn't exactly buzz with life.

So I wanted to inject a bit more of some choice pollinator annuals - Borage, lots more Cornflowers, and my beloved Scorpionweed…

Now I know in the very dim and distant past that dragonflies used to be seen as forces of darkness - the 'Devil's Darning Needles' were said to sew up the mouths of those who swear and scold (although that sounds like a force for good to me!).

However, in our more enlightened times, I've yet to meet someone who isn't fascinated by them, so one of the big joys of having a pond is watching dragonflies and damselflies…

Countryfile Live starts today at Blenheim Palace, running until 6 August, and the RSPB team has sent me some photos of them creating our stand there, with the message that they are looking forward to seeing loads of RSPB members and supporters over the four days.

I should explain that my role has been nothing more than advising on the wildlife-friendly plants to use, so I can take no credit at all! I had heard there…