The person interested in wildlife needs to change their habits with the seasons to be more in tune with nature. Hopefully they have being feeding the birds over the winter and in this way have helped keep stocks higher, undoing some of the damage that man does by his life style. The nesting boxes are in place so there are a few extra homes for the birds that have been helped through the lean season.

With the weather improving, now is the time to start reducing the amount you are feeding, till it can be stopped altogether in the breeding season. Don't stop filling water containers! Frost can freeze water and leave birds and mammals with nothing to drink during the winter, during the summer dry spells can have the same affect. In very hot weather when the ground becomes caked it can be impossible for birds like Blackbirds to get food leading to starvation. If the ground dries out and cracks feed over ripe fruit and finely mashed dog food near the cover of a bush (but not where cats can ambush the diner), along with water to drink.This may help a family of birds survive a drought.

There is a body of opinion that says you should never feed wild birds during the summer, I am afraid I differ and think you should use common sense. I have talked about feeding during drought conditions. Another case where feeding may help is if numbers of a species for some reason have dramatically decreased (In my area House Sparrow numbers decreased alarmingly one year, probably due to the use of an insecticide), targeting the species with suitable food may help. Try not to get the birds dependent on you feeding them all the time, if this happens and you stop feeding, what happens the birds?

Generally the two main things to watch out for during the coming months are that you don't disturb nature when it is reproducing and to keep a bed of nettles. Cut strips through the nettles, but leave the cut ones lying.In this way the caterpillars can move on to fresh young greens. If the strips are cut in rotation this will make sure the nettle bed always has fresh growth.

Perhaps when you sit out in the deck chair enjoying the pleasures of sound, colour and entertainment that wildlife can bring, a little time could be taken to read about wildlife gardening and with small changes to your patch the number of species it supports increases. Don't forget the insects, many are useful and many are beautiful.

I am going to leave you with an old "theory" from the days when gardens were bigger. It roughly said that the well-kept garden with the diligent gardener was more susceptible to an invasion of pests than the neglected garden. In other words nature is a better gardener than man is.