Welcoming (most) wildlife into your garden

Should you be selective about what forages in your garden? Once you open the gate to wildlife there’s no stopping them. I have a bug house which is smothered in spider webs. Two bird feeders attract lots of waxeyes and a few sparrows. The blackbirds seem to fend for themselves, digging into the leaf litter for snails, worms and insects (and they enjoy the birdbath), and finches occasionally fly in to feed on the seeds of plants such as borage which also attracts bees when flowering. Fantails flit high up in the canopy, catching insects on the wing. Other birds pass overhead: spur-winged plovers, gliding seagulls and sometimes a pair of ducks or a skein of geese. Sometimes I hear a grey warbler and distant magpies.

On the flip side, cats cruise through (discouraged by a water gun if I’m fast enough), Felix brings in a rat now and again, and ants appear with monotonous regularity. Two days ago I was horrified to find thick masses of ants around the guttering downpipes and long lines of them along the eaves and walls of the house. I should have taken photos to freak you out, but I had turned into a rubber-gloved, masked avenger with a loaded spray gun before it occurred to me to record the event. The next day there was little sign of ants – except along the clothes line where a column of them was migrating to a nearby tree, like Mother Courage and her children toiling across the battlefield. It seems I only feel sorry for them when they are in retreat.

There are several natural sources of bird food: apples, berries, aphids, and abutilon, camelia and protea flowers.

And there are two bird feeders:

The new bird feeder (on the left) requires sugar water and ‘truffles’. Lately, I’ve been replacing the truffles every day for these voracious (hungry?) waxeyes. So that nothing is wasted, I put the little bits which fall through the wire feeder into the other bird feeder, with the windfall apples. I worry that I should leave a gap before replacing the truffles (a day? half a day?) so that the birds don’t become too dependent on them.

Both bird feeders are cat proof. For Felix, the new bird feeder is cat television. He sits in the parsley under the cranberry bush and watches for hours – even now, in the rain.