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On the weekend of 25/26 October, the RSPB held a Feed the Birds Day, with various events up and down the country. It doesn't yet seem cold enough to worry about putting up seed feeders or fat cakes, but then we're probably more protected from

bird-feeding.For the last two years, I've been able to get really close to long-tailed tits, but this is nothing to do with my bird table, but my choice of holiday cottage. Two years running we rented a small cottage near Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle

It's cold, there's snow on the ground, and all is quiet in the garden. But I've just been outside feeding the wildlife. In my case that does not mean putting up nut-filled bird feeders or hanging fat balls, it means tipping the kitchen waste

an egg into the acorn, it alsoinjects a cocktail of chemicals that causes the acorn's growth to be interrupted. Then as the grub feeds inside it too secretes chemicals thatalter the normal development of the acorn forcing it to grow into the knopper

and suburban London about 100 years ago. It was something of an exciting wildlife spectacle. Writing in 1909, Charles Dixon describes the rapidly increasing gull expansion into the capital in his popular book Birdlife of London. He is rather bemused

2007 will be remembered as a very good year for wasps. But before people start complaining about their vicious stings and bad tempers, I must point out that wasps are actually our friends. After birds and spiders, they are the most important insect

and parasites.For the first few weeks they must forage alone, feeding the first batch of grubs through to maturity. If the queen dies, eaten by a bird, caught by mould, or trodden underfoot as she struggles to get airborne one cool March morning, the colony

After writing an article on how and why to keep a garden wildlife diary for BBC Gardener's World Magazine, I've been invited to go electronic and turn it into a blog. My handwriting is atrocious so maybe this will be a good way of keeping the diary

and have one snuffling about in the bushes nearby or see one bounding across one of the paths.Then round the corner there's a fight between a grey squirrel and a magpie. The bird is showing its characteristic persistence by hopping and fluttering back

To Soicherons, Villars-Dompierre, in the Cote d'Or region of France for two weeks and the wildlife here is subtly different to that in East Dulwich. For one thing we are surrounded by large flowery meadows, hedges dripping with Mirabelle plums