A guest post by Adrian Thomas, author of Gardening for Wildlife …

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I’ve got babies popping out all over the place!

The day before yesterday, it was the Great Tits whose family emerged from their palatial nursery inside my Starling nestbox to try their luck in the big wide world, and hopefully finding plenty of insects in my woodland garden.

Great Tit emerging from a Starling box

Then yesterday it was the turn of the Blue Tits. One of the youngsters decided to attempt a landing on the conservatory roof, which was wet from the recent drizzle. It was quite a shock to the little fledgling when it started to ski uncontrollably down towards the gutter.

This to me is the theme of June – youngsters everywhere, all learning fast. They need to, for it is a jungle out there for them. We see gardens as a benign place, when actually the survival of the fittest is going on all around us. I remind myself it isn’t grim or sad – it’s life.

But one crèche of babes that are happily going about their business without a care in the world are the toadpoles in my garden. (Apparently the ‘tad’ in the word tadpole derives from the word ‘toad’, but has come to mean junior froggies too. The ‘pole’ bit means ‘head’, as in Redpoll. I’m voting that we now move language on and have tadpoles and toadpoles.)

Toadpoles

The reason that the toadpoles can be so cavalier is that they taste bad. The newts don’t like them; the Blackbirds that hop around my pond margin looking for pond snails don’t like them. With about 500 toadpoles currently hoovering up all the algae from my pond sides, I allow myself a little parental pride that my gardening for wildlife is having some effect.

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Adrian Thomas

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RSPB Gardening for Wildlife by Adrian Thomas is available now. To read the foreword by Chris Packham and see our gardening ‘to do’ list for June click the cover below!