When animal attraction makes life interesting

Later that same day, as dusk was descending, the little terrier dog was sitting bolt upright on the mat by the backdoor, gazing up at the stars and swinging her head from left to right. Two days later I watched as the collie dog stood stiffly beside the garden pond, gazing into the murky waters. Even the normally silent canary has been shrieking out to the heavens. So far the guinea pig has remained as normal as a guinea pig can be.

It wasn't until the weekend came that explanations for their odd behaviour became apparent. I was woken in the very early hours of Saturday morning by a frantic scrabbling noise just above my head. Oh no, I thought, we've got a rodent invasion in the roof. This was followed by a series of ear piercing screeches.

I sighed with relief. I knew that noise.

It was the call of the swift. You can hear it if you sit out in the summer time and watch them whistling through the air. They are so acrobatic, changing direction at breakneck speed. They remind me of the small fighter space ships on a Star Wars film.

The theory is that if they are flying higher then we are in for good weather, whereas if they swoop lower down, the weather will change for the worse.

They are chasing the gnats and small flies that have been quite a pest in the gardens this year. The warm but wet weather has provided perfect breeding conditions, especially for the midge and mosquito.

The larvae are quite apparent in ponds, wriggling around just under the surface. There are chemical measures that you can take to eradicate them, but I prefer not to use them as I do try and be as organic as possible. Plus, I am encouraging the pond to be a wild as possible when it comes to the life evolving within it.

So far I have been successful in attracting one natural predator of flying insects, the frog. I have quite a small army of them at the moment, of all shapes and sizes. They sunbathe on the rocks that edge the pond, and live in the crevices in between them. I discovered that it was one such frog that the collie was eyeing up during the week. Normally, when the dogs approach the pond, all the frogs jump off into the water.

However, I have thrown a couple of barley straw bundles into the pond in an attempt to control the green algae. They take a few days to sink. Instead of diving off into the water, the frogs had leapt onto the floating bale. There they sat, taunting the dog, safely out of reach.

The other big eater of flying insects is the bat. Bats are a protected species now, with fifteen different types resident in the United Kingdom. It has been said that the average bat can consume up to three and a half thousand midges in one night.

We usually can't detect the noises made by the bat as they fly around at night, but dogs can. This was probably the first time since moving into the countryside that I had observed the little terrier trying to locate the flying bats. She could hear them but not see them.

Two of the big threats to the bat population are the chemical preservatives that we paint onto timber and domestic cats. However, it wasn't a bat that the cat dragged through the cat flap the other day. To my horror, the trail of blood lead to a half-eaten male greenfinch.

I had been watching the pair of greenfinches visit the bird table since before Christmas. I had got to know them quite well, and was shocked and very upset by the cat's actions. It was only a couple of days later that my male canary started singing each time I left the back door open. The canary had itself been widowed only a few months ago, and seemed to be bonding with the newly bereft finch outside.

We may think that we have domesticated our animals, but they still have an unbreakable chain with their wilder compatriots. They can still interact with the natural birds, mammals and amphibians that inhabit our gardens.

I am waiting for the day that I see the guinea pig skipping across the lawn with a large red deer.