I have a list of species that I want to try and give a home to in my new garden. High up on that list are meadow butterflies, species such as Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers and Common Blues, but it also includes a number of our smallest butterflies, the skippers.

And this week, as I walked the new paths I've mown through the few open areas of the garden, I was delighted to see a flash of amber dart by me at knee level, a…

Once in a while you meet someone who takes your understanding of a subject forward in leaps and bounds. Last week, it was the turn of bats.

The revelation came from a conversation I had with Matt Dodds, a leading light in the bat world in the Midlands. And he was able to share with me some emerging results from in-depth studies of the roost and nest sites of bats.

The advice that is normally meted out is to have a range…

One of the ideas I'm very keen on is anything that takes wildlife gardening out of the back garden and brings it into our front gardens and public spaces.

So I was delighted this week to find that the volunteers who look after a tiny park just up the road from the RSPB offices in Brighton have transformed it this year with some cornfield wildflower planting.

There are Poppies and Corn Chamomile and Corn Marigold…