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My two compost bins are being very productive. As well as yielding their first crop of usable compost, now spread over back and front gardens to great effect, they are also home to a heaving mass of wildlife. Every time I open the lids a great cloud

in there.The garden spiders, Aranaeus diadematus, are starting to get very large and obvious, especially those round the compost bins. We compost everything we can, including kitchen waste, so clouds of fruit flies emerge every time I lift off the lid. Even

small critters come to warm themselves. And what's this? The compost bin has started to leak fruit flies; the perfect snack for a hungry spider.

The only wildlife I've seen this week has been the rather dead-life brought in by the cats - three and a half mice and a rat not much smaller than our guinea pig. I'm more or less calm that we have mice in the compost bins, but I'm uneasy about

queen buff-tailed bumblebee, was examining the compost heap; I guess she was searching out a suitable hibernation site. Every now and then something else would buzz past: rosemary leaf beetles, green shieldbugs and ladybirds were all very active

, then racing them before letting them go behind the compost bin.Snails can be educational too. Putting one on a pane of glass allows you to see the rippling muscles of the foot as the gastropod glides forward. Most people are perplexed to see that the ripples