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Thankfully, Buster the guinea-pig has a thick night-time cover of old carpet, otherwise he might have been shocked to discover the fornication going on outside his hutch one morning last week. When I peered out from the kitchen at 6.30am, two great

, but for the most of us garden wildlife means the insects that are always about, always different, and always fascinating. Except when there is snow on the ground.When there is snow cover, nothing moves. So I was curious to see what would be the first insect

Nearly back to normal now, after Christmas and New Year. Sunday saw us with 3-year-old scooting in Dulwich Park. Thankfully there was no wind, because it was blisteringly cold, and the ground was still covered in frost. So when I saw a small bird

in when the old one sprung a leak. Our pond is raised, three railway sleepers high off the ground, so these two females and a male had managed to scramble up and climb in. There's not much else going on in the water yet - no boatmen or beetles or skaters

Last winter, when I went to great trouble to feed the birds in my garden, my offerings were largely ignored. This winter, I'm trying again, leaving seeds, chopped apples and suet pellets for ground-feeding birds such as robins, blackbirds

a tight-pruned lime and a small cypress. Nevertheless, the city is splashed all over with natural colour as sills, walls, yards and railings are covered with pots and window boxes.Some buildings in the rickety 'old quarter' are so bedecked they look

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

they hunted in packs, like wolves. Of course, each is hunting alone, but they often appear in numbers at this time of year, scurrying across bare ground in the spring sunshine.The ones running around my tulips are Pardosa, and although I can't decide exactly

it's five-star accommodation.Last July, I responded to a Freecycle email from someone who'd filled in her established pond and razed her entire garden to the ground, prior to a redesign. It was no longer a safe habitat for frogs, and those she'd found