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We have a bumblebee nest in our compost bin. I first noticed a month ago when the first few workers started coming and going. Now we have a steady stream. The bees are buff-tailed, Bombus terrestris, one of our commonest species.I've told the family

There's a spider the size of a gardening glove in my compost bin. It obviously gets a good living in there, feeding on the flies, woodlice, beetles and earwigs, the remains of which can be vaguely guessed in its untidy sheet of a web. I wouldn

What's the point of having a compost heap unless it's to breed fruit flies. That's the way my entomologist's mind works. During the summer great clouds of them billowed up every time I dumped the kitchen waste. They got in my eyes and hair

into the compost bin. Even here, though, there is not much about at the moment. A couple of woodlice clamp down hard to the wooden rim and there's the remains of a hoverfly puparium (chrysalis) wedged into a crevice outside. Like most wildlife out there

. And yet it is precisely this shelter which is most in danger of being tidied away, cut down, mulched, shredded, composted or otherwise removed to make way for next year's grand displays.If you want wildlife to feel at home in your garden, let it make a

I have cats. Every so often I have to live with the guilt that they kill the local wildlife. It's usually one of the mice breeding in the compost heaps or a blue-tit fledgling. The main hunter is the black and white one; lovely and soft and over

into doggerel when all thought of sorrow or joy, girl or boy was erased from my mind. It purposefully stepped forward, picked up a dead mouse that was lying in the grass and flew off.We've had mice in the compost bins ever since we started putting kitchen waste

had a ragged ball of spawn, but it quickly disintegrated into an opaque white mess, and no tadpoles ever resulted. We often see frogs of various sizes, under flower pots, behind the compost bins, or hopping about in the more unkempt bits of the flower

. Within three minutes she was back with a squeaking victim. I chucked it back into the compost bin to tell its mates to stay out of the way next year.

, up against the fence and they trample—audibly—inside the compost bins. But they never get into any trouble. I wonder if I'm asking for trouble by wondering what all the fuss is about?It's the time of year when they start coming indoors. Always an odd