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If you've ever set out to see a kingfisher, the chances are you've returned home disappointed.

I hopped on London's Northern Line to Gospel Oak to work at our Date with Nature on Hampstead Heath with no expectations for the day what so ever. What a day it proved to be. There were the usual but wonderful suspects; cormorants, tufted ducks, coots, moorhens, starlings, crows, swans, mallard and of course parakeets.

You know what's coming so, yes. I did see a kingfisher. Twice! They are so gorgeous. The movement, the colour and dynamics. Everything about them makes you stand and stare slack-jawed. One of our great volunteers, Don Wright had brought along a nifty digital video camera and while his partner, Clare, chatted to visitors, he captured some great footage of the kingfisher.

The same day I was within two metres of a pair of jays, pecking at the ground, oblivious to the people and dogs around them. Luckily, I have a pair of jays that visit our garden at home. Jays too are stunning to look at; maybe I'm a sucker for anything turquoise. The British Museum's Aztec collection is a typical example where the colour is at its best, with turquoise mosaics on skulls, carved snakes and all manner of artefacts.

It was incredibly mild on the heath and ladybirds were nesting in the corners of our marquee. If they didn't find somewhere to shelter over the weekend, I fear this week's cold weather will have taken its toll. They'll look for soft centres of twigs and crevices in trees and buildings. Some will shelter in shrubs or dead wood and this is another area of concern as quite a few piles of wood and cut shrubbery have been gathered ready for bonfire night.

Please give your bonfire a good check over before you set it alight. I'm not suggesting a painstaking CSI style fingertip search. Just look for wildlife before burning. Bugs, hedgehogs and birds may be sheltering in or around your Guy Fawkes night pyre. If you fancy a wildlife walk with Guy Fawkes history thrown-in? Visit our Rye Meads reserve in the upper Lee Valley. The gunpowder plotters supposedly met in the old Rye House ... all that remains is the gatehouse but it's a link with the past in an unexpected spot.

They say it's not over until the fat lady sings.. well in nature, it will be all over if the fat lady [robin] doesn't sing.

Feed the Birds weekend has passed but it's not a one off activity, the weekend's a reminder to continue to put out food for garden birds all through the winter.

What we're saying is, if you don't feed your garden birds to help them keep warm, they'll freeze to death. There are no size 0 models in this winter's bird fashion parade. Only the well-fed will survive to deliver a dawn chorus.

Over the weekend our London teams were on Hampstead Heath and in St James' Park allotment, reminding people to spare a few cake crumbs, fruit or other kitchen scraps for birds. The question they were asked most often was, "why should we put out food; birds have survived without human intervention in the past?" Well, I may be preaching to the converted on this blog-page but our most common species, house sparrows and starlings, are suffering huge population crashes. Both have lost around two-thirds of their numbers. Research strongly suggests this is food related.

There's a real shortage of bugs and seeds to eat. Our gardens have become extensions of our homes and are kept neat and tidy, there's far less to support wildlife than there used to be. Addressing this imbalance is easy, and the good news is that it need not be expensive or difficult and you'll be able to enjoy the sight of birds, butterflies and bees all helping to keep pests down for you.

So what do you do? You restock nature's larder by growing flowers, shrubs and grasses. No garden? No problem. A windowbox, balcony or a flat roof not only look nicer when you grow plants, but you'll also saving the opera that is nature. Visit our Community pages where people have shared their experiences of gardening for wildlife. If you need advice, tell us about the space you've got and we'll give you some ideas. It's our Homes for Wildlife project. It's FREE, but you do need to register.

Fat is a avianist issue, so bring on the fat birds. Use your food scraps to support nature instead of feeding your bin and we'll all winners.

My daughter's 'music' homework was all about the blues. She just wouldn't believe me when I said the godfather of the blues is a gravelly voiced chap called Muddy Waters.

"What sort of name is that," she asked. "It's as sensible and clear as most," I responded, glancing at the names on a magazine in front of me: Chenille, BB, Missy P, Axel and Wolf!

This exchange came back to me as I spoke with a reporter who'd called about Boris Johnson's long awaited Feasibility Report on the Thames Estuary Airport proposal. He's announced he's pursuing the £40 billion plan after engineer Doug Oakervee's report stated it's all possible.

Of course it is physically possible. No one's ever doubted that. Just as it's physically possible to build an airport on the moon. So what does the report say about caring for the legally protected habitats in the estuary? How they'll get round the issue of the Thames Estuary being a major migratory route for tens of thousands of birds that use it as a navigational aid? Then there's the wildlife that lives there, how will that be handled?

Doug Oakervee doesn't know.. he says: "It takes little imagination to appreciate that if any of the proposals or schemes [for a Thames Estuary Airport] under consideration were introduced without appropriate amelioration measures then the impact on this precious ecological reserve could be disastrous and in this day and age almost certainly unacceptable. Nonetheless, this has to be brought into balance if we are to succeed in finding effective means to deal with the many and complex issues surrounding climate change, as well as the needs and demands of a growing population."

Building an airport in a unique and fragile environment that supports tens of thousands of wild birds is not the way to go about tackling climate change. Doug Oakervee acknowledges this and his report probably didn't give Mayor Boris the lift he was looking for. Mr Oakervee's report believes the whole estuary needs consideration to ensure whatever is done, benefits the habitat, the people that live there, it's wildlife and of course the wider UK business interests.

Mayor Johnson's set up a new GLA Steering Group, as recommended by Mr Oakervee's feasibility report, which also states work on the project must begin next year.  However, Mr Oakervee stressed the need for a well financed group; Mayor Johnson has created one with just 1% of the funding Doug Oakervee believes is required.

I hope the members of that steering group are fans of the blues, cause they're entering very muddy waters.

My Aunty Joyce is forever linked with goldcrests in my mind now. On Monday I joined relatives to bid her farewell at Birmingham's Robin Hood Cemetery. Afterwards we gathered in a nearby hotel and there in the late October sunshine, two of these gorgeous little birds played hide-and-seek in the top of a conifer. It's a nice way to remember someone.

Back at work my thoughts are turning to our annual Feed the Birds events, coming up the weekend after next (24 & 25 Oct). It's a time when we all start to feel the impact of winter as the clocks go back an hour, making the morning's rather dark! I've already invested in new batteries for my bike lights in preparation.

Birds have a pretty high body temperature and if they don't get enough food to eat each day to keep warm overnight, you won't be hearing them come the dawn chorus. Lots of people aren't sure about what food they can put out for birds. Basically avoid salty stuff and too much bread. Always try to provide water, prefaerably poured fresh into a clean bird bath on a daily basis. Never put out more than the birds will easily eat in a day, otherwise you could attract unwanted wildlife.

What's always best .. is to provide food naturally. Nature's larder has been left somewhat bare thanks to our overly zealous tidying of gardens and open spaces. There simply aren't as many berries, seeds and nuts around as there used to be. Imprortantly, insect numbers are also down and many birds rely on the high protein they can get from bugs, slugs and worms. So you'll need to embrace them too. There are ways of doing this without hugging a slimey snail or tucking a moth up in a nice wooly blanket in your bedroom drawers. Bug hotels, or wildlife stacks, are easy to create and you can use garden and household scraps instead of sending them to landfill.

When we get cold, we can light a fire, pull on a thicker coat or switch on a heater. Birds don't have that luxury. They may, in some cases, huddle together. I favour that approach when cold. Birds may nest alongside warm chimneys, in thick bushes away from the wind or undercover in old buildings. But the only thing they can really do to keep warm, is eat.

"It's not a cull!" Exasperated yelling in my dreams is not something I'd normally share; it reveals too much. But I've been forced to repeat those five little words so many times this past week, the phrase has obviously embedded itself in my subconcious.

Natural England has shifted ring-necked parakeets on to the general licence, along with Canada geese, Egyptian geese and monk parakeets. They join crows and magpies on the list of species that landowners can kill or trap without seeking permission.. the catch is that these birds can still only be shot or trapped if there is a good public health and safety or conservation reason for doing so. Previously, you'd have to give your reasons up front, but at least you knew you were acting within the law. Now, you'll have to make your excuses after acting, and if you haven't got good enough grounds... you become a jailbird.

Ring-necked parakets have lived in the UK since the 1800's. Someone returning from Africa or Asia, possibly a trader, probably brought them to the UK to sell as exotic curiosities. Some escaped and some were released and over the years, their numbers slowly increased. The urban myths say some escaped from the set of the Humphrey Bogart film, The African Queen. Jimi Hendrix added a couple on Carnaby Street in the sixties in a gesture of free love. The fact is, they've been here a long, long time. 

They're loud, bright green with a rose coloured bill and like to hang out around people in very large numbers. You can't miss them. That's part of the problem.  Like Matt Lucas's character Daffyd in the Little Britain TV series "the only queer in the village", they are flambuoyant and stir-up reactions. Some people hate them on sight, others admire and revel in their difference. Shifting ring-necked parakeets from one list to another is muddying the water. Nothing has significantly changed, they are still a legally protected species.

Government money, our tax-payers cash, is being spent on a couple of studies, to find out more about parakeet's. Previous studies found they were not causing a problem. Parakeet numbers have increased since then, so these new studies are welcome. Deciding whether, or how, to control an expanding, well established and geographically widespread species needs good intelligence, clearly thought-through strategies & plans, supported by good communication. I look forward to that and the return of peaceful dreams.

Actually not all the leaves are brown, but they're not far off it. My garden birds don't seem too perturbed so I'm taking their lack of interest in my seed feeders as evidence that they don't yet think the tim'e right to fatten up ready for the cold, dark winter. I'm putting the leaf-fall down to the drier than average summer rather than an early autumn.

I've done all those annual maintenance jobs, like cleaning out the nest boxes, so I'm feeling smug. What's just immedaitely added to this feeling of smugness is the sight of a jay gliding in to view. It's now calling from it's perch on a hawthorn bush next door. I saw a pair of them in Islington just the other week behind Highbury and Islington tube station in Laycock Street. Our Make Your Nature Count results show jays are surprisingly common in Greater London. They were recorded in 15% of gardens surveyed, putting them in 18th place.

What disapointed me was the small number of hedgehog sightings. I was hoping these prickly little fella's might be more common. I'd love to have one visit my garden, if only to help keep slugs down. Instead, I'll have to rely on thrushes and blackbirds. Only 6% of London gardens can boast hedgehogs, compared with a UK average of 25%. There are simple things you can do to attract more wildlife to your garden, visit our Homes for Wildlife pages for FREE advice.

Feed the Birds is our next big mission. Running over the weekend of 24 and 25 October we're looking for public support to grow more food for birds. Topping up feeders really helps, but fresh food plucked from the vine, bush, tree or ground is better. We've five top tips that will help on our Feed the Birds webpages.

London, to many, is the never ending rumble and roar of planes, trains and road traffic. To me, these are the bass notes that underscore the chattering high notes of sparrows, the caw-caw of rooks and magpies; the rat-a-tats of woodepeckers and the chirping of robins. At home the symphony has the added coughing of squirrels punctuated at night by the rare bark of a fox.

All sorts of critters share London's dynamic spaces with us humans, and now we have an idea of just how much wildlife visits our gardens; thanks to the hundreds who took part in this spring's Make your Nature Count survey.  It was designed to give us some information on what's commonly outside our back doors. The full and detailed results are out this week.

At first glance, there's nothing surprising. I can reveal that pigeons are our most common London bird and we have lots of cats, foxes, squirrels, frogs and toads. Interestingly, Croydon is London's favourite hang-out for badgers, while hedgehogs fancy Harrow. The survey is also the RSPB's first to cover a period when we have summer migrants, so it's given us a snapshot of swifts in the UK. They were recently "amber listed" as a species of conservation concern.

Statistics are always tricky things and can be interpreted in different ways. It's tempting to be drawn in to assumptions based on the data, but this is just the first year and we're hoping it will eventually reveal long-term trends that reflect how birds and other wildlife are getting on. Every species has good years or bad, but if you look at data over a decade... or five, it will flag-up patterns that could show species moving to find better conditions elsewhere or an increase or decrease in numbers that may be cause for concern.

As a conservation charity we're constantly being asked, "what difference will it make to me if such and such a spider or bird goes extinct?" The answer is not always easy and occassionally the honest response is.. "we don't know." Having said that, history has shown that when one strand of nature's web snaps, the rest goes out of balance, often with disastrous consequences. China is a case in point. It's leaders decided sparows were eating too much of their seed crops. They sent people out to scare the birds in to the air and to keep them flying until they dropped dead from exhaustion. It worked and the sparrows were decimated. The following year, the locust population exploded as it hadn't been kept in check by the hungry locust eating sparrows and crops were stripped bare, resulting in serious food shortages and mass starvation.

Survey data shows us that London's sparrows, starlings and swifts are all declining in number. As are bees, many butterflies and a dozen or so plants. We need public support to continue to monitor it all. We need public support to do things that help wildlife, and we need financial support to achieve all of that. We are a needy charity.  Wildlife, particularly birds, are the first to feel the impact of environmental change. People are usually the last to feel its impact. Investing time, effort and cash in the environment is an investment in a better future.

Wellies, pop-up tents, skaggy jeans and portaloos are not not really my thing, but I've just enjoyed a weekend of festivals.

Saturday, I journeyed far to the east of London. Well, just near Ipswich. It was for Harvest at Jimmy's. It's not hardcore festival, more a music and food funtime for families. Badly Drawn Boy was angrily performing on stage and I really enjoyed Jon Allen, he just needs a big hug. Cookery demonstrations by celeb chef Gino D'Acampo were announced with a frenzied build-up tape that ended with his name called out like a footbal commentator naming this month's favoured goal scorer.. the final "O" extending for several seconds.

Chatting with Peter Sugar, who's creating Darwin's Garden at Jimmy's, I learnt how a vast flock of rooks and jackdaws haunt the farm and its fields. Apparently they're mega fans of pig feed. Sampling Jimmy's ware at the hog-roast I had to agree that anything this tasty must be given good quality nosh. Sure enough the cloud of rooks and jackdaws were clearly visible and weren't put off by the noise or crowds.

Interestingly though, Peter tells me they have no magpies, no barn owls and house sparrows are rare sightings. All three should favour farms. House sparrows were also lacking on Sunday. I was working at the Thames Festival, inviting people to join our December 5 March with the Stop Climate Chaos coalition. It will be a symbolic ocean wave of opinion, crashing against the obstinate rocks of Westminster, dashing away the complacency that prevents action on climate change. To boost the watery theme we're asking people to wear blue and to join-in a co-ordinated wave (a peaceful wave of the arms) towards Parliament at 3pm; do join us.

Anyway, Sunday. At our stand near Tower Bridge, I saw cormorants, gulls, starlings, magpies, rooks, collared doves and more, but no house sparrows. I even managed to see a peregrine further upstream. It was sadly on the back panel of the Tate Modern's chimney, hidden from our telecopes set-up on the very busy Southbank. It was a blustery day so it was probably more sheltered at the back of the Tate.

As a teenager, I took wildlife for granted. I'm now worried my children will not see half the creatures I did growing-up. The very busy natural world of my youth has diminished, and that's why I'll be waving my hands towards Westminster come December 5.

With some apprehension I'm sitting waiting to have a trapped nerve resolved by an Osteopath and, looking from the clinic window I spot two peregrines.

The pair I've just spotted are plastic decoys on a roof in Hackney's Broadway Market. Presumably put there to scare off pigeons. I seem to come across peregrines wherever I go. On my hols my children, partner and me marvelled at a pair of peregrines at Cheddar Gorge and at least one more in Dorset near Lyme Regis. I'm sure I saw one near Penzance too. 

If you want to see the real thing, our Date at the Tate (Modern) Peregrine Watch ends this coming Sunday (13th September).

Running since July, it's been a roller coaster of an event. Our brilliant volunteers and staff have braved strong winds, driving rain, lecherous drunks and much more to show-off these magnificent kings of speed.

There are a known dozen breeding pairs of peregrines in the Capital. All are closely monitored and none were introduced, they simply arrived and settled down.

With London's slightly warmer urban climate, a surfeit of ledges to sit on and more feral pigeons to eat than you can imagine, these peregrines probably think they've died and gone to heaven. They still need our help though. Come and visit us by the Millennium Bridge and sign our Bird of Prey pledge to help save peregrines for the next generation to enjoy.

A sparrow. I saw a sparrow in my garden. I'm amazed and delighted. If you're wondering why the sight of a small, brown and rather common garden bird should get me in such a feverish state... consider the fact that I have NEVER seen a sparrow in my garden since we moved in almost four years ago. They are vanishing.

My garden is not exactly green, nor is it large. It's better than it was, but I have yet to lift the great expanse of concrete slabs we inherited with the house. I hope to grass most of it in the near future and will aim for a wild flower meadow rather than a cropped, stripey lawn.

Sparrows are lazy critters and rarely move far from their home colonies. You'd be lucky to see one stray more than half a kilometre. So to see one on the feeder in my garden is actually amazing. It was a young female with an obvious passion for adventure. I'm not aware of a house sparrow colony nearby so she must have wandered some distance! Where did she come from? Will she come back? Will she write or send chocolates?

Questions, questions. Is this sparrow's arrival a result of the changes I've made to the garden? Is it just a juvenile looking for a new colony, a female looking for a mate? Is it just a one-off thing, never to be repeated. I guess I'll have to wait and watch to answer these questions.

I haven't got any figures to support this, but I have a theory that London's sparrows are starting to recover from a long running decline. That's quite a controversial statement and is made with some very thin anecdotal evidence. I know the RSPB is doing a lot to save sparrows. I know local authorities and land-owners we're working with in the Capital are doing a lot for house sparrows. I know many individuals are helping grow food and shelter by planting hedges, shrubs and trees and leaving some long grass at their lawn-edges. Now, other charities are waking up to the fact that we all need to act to save our sparrows. With so much going on, we must be having an impact.

Data suggests otherwise. We're still losing species across the board. Sparrows are great barometers of the state of our world. Because they're lazy and won't stray far, not even to find food, they reflect the true state of our environment. If the things they need in order to survive have vanished, it means something's going wrong with our environment. Consider sparrows an early warning system.

Bees are also sufferring but they're less obvious than sparrows. Restoring plants for house sparrows helps bees too. But, you can feed bees without having a garden, if you don't mind them and wasps hanging around your homemade bee feeder. Just get a shallow non-porous dish and pour in a solution of two tablespoons of granulated sugar, dissolved in a tablespoon of water. Put this outside near some nectar rich flowers and hey presto, your very own bee feeder.

Wherever you live, you're influenced by the seasons. All our food, air and water comes from nature, we need to look after it now. The Government's latest announcement by Hilary Benn on Food Security goes someway towards recognising that our wellbeing and nature are interlinked. I want my daughters' to be able to enjoy the sight of sparrows in gardens and parks. I want them to be able to close their eyes and hear the buzz of industrious honey bees and admire  our amazing landscapes. They can only do this if we all invest time and money supporting and protecting nature. You can help convince the Government to build a future that values nature by signing our Letter to the Future. Speak-up for nature and show politicians that we want our tax money to help rebuild our economy in a way that doesn't harm nature. Together, we can make it happen.

August already and to hammer home the point of time flying, the swifts that have been screaming, ducking and diving over my home... have gone. Hopefully they'll be back from their African wintering grounds next year.

I've cleaned out the swift box I had fixed to my wall. It was used by a family of tits, who left behind a soft mossy mass with a base of twigs and plenty of animal hair. There was one un-hatched egg left in the bottom of the nest box and the remains of a dead chick. Despite this apparent loss, they successfully raised at least three chicks. Having cleaned the box, I'll try to move it higher up the wall, to make it more attractive to next year's returning swifts.

The adult category winner of our Mind the Bird photo competition was Russell Spencer. His image of a green woodpecker was one of my personal favourites. I saw one close-up in Camden's Waterlow Park the other day. It was having a whale of a time chomping on ants on the grassy hill. These birds are doing well in London. Russell's was spotted and photographed on Hampstead Heath.

There's a great opportunity over the next three weeks to see kingfisher's. A pair with a rocky relationship has finally got round to hatching some eggs in a man-made bank at our Rye Meads nature reserve in the Lee Valley. They're clearly visible and will remain so while they're feeding their young. The adults paired up at the beginning of the year but separated, leaving reserve staff feeling a little sad. But, they've paired up again and the result is an unknown number of chicks. This late brood is a bit unusual but great timing for family visits over the school holidays. Who can resist a quick visit to see such a beautiful bird?

I had a close encounter with a more common but equally striking bird the other day. I was pimping our garden when a mistle thrush came to say hello. It seemed quite tame and didn't dash off when I, my partner and one of my daughters came close. We could almost touch it. With its straw coloured chest and striking lines of chestnut spots it was lovely to see. It appeared to be sneezing and completely ignored the piles of freshly uncovered snails we'd exposed whilst weeding. I guess it was after a more fruity, berry-based meal because it soon flew-off.

We launched our new House Sparrow Date with Nature event at the Tower of London on Friday. As if to emphasise our point that these once common birds are now scarce, none of the sparrows that live there put in an appearance. We'll try to entice them out of the bushes when we return this coming Friday. We were treated to some fantastic glimpses of a small colony of starlings that live there. You often see them swirling around the south tower of Tower Bridge but they were having great fun around the tables of the coffee stall near the Tower of London entrance. It's a great place for people-watching and for soaking-up old and new London's culture with a city skyline to be proud of. Maybe you'll get lucky and see a sparrow too?

How cool are we! Leonardo DiCaprio dropped in to our peregrine watch at the Tate Modern the other day. After viewing the birds on the chimney through our scopes, chatting with our volunteers and signing our Birds of Prey petition, he bought a couple of our soft toy calling peregrines before vanishing along the Southbank.

Our peregrine watch has also welcomed another three special visitors. Jasper den Dulk, his sister Beatrix and their friend Jasper Rance, raised £137 for our Birds of Prey campaign by selling their toys. They're all under the age of ten, so this selfless act deserves a proper face-to-face thank you, and where better to say a public thank-you than a site where peregrines live wild. They got some good views of one of the young peregrines, who posed on the chimney then flew off towards St Paul's Cathedral. Look out for their story on the BBC's Newsround web pages.

Our Date at the Tate continues until mid-September, so follow the example set by the great and the good and see the peregrines for yourselves. Signing our visitors book supports the campaign calling for existing laws to be enforced; protecting all birds of prey from illegal persecution.

Humble sparrows are also keeping us busy. We've sown special seed mixes on plots of land in public spaces across Greater London. The idea is to naturally restore food sources that we appear to have lost over the past couple of decades. Sparrows need insects (protein) when young and seeds (carbohydrate) when older, but don't wander far from their nest sites. It's this lazy approach to life that is threatening their future. Our grass and wildflower plots should help by providing both insects and seeds for them to eat, as well as looking great and bringing colour to many parks; like that shown on the right.

As part of the campaign to raise awareness of our vanishing sparrows, we're working with the Historic Royal Palaces to show-off a small colony of sparrows at the Tower of London. Sparrows are now quite rare in central London, so the Tower sparrows almost deserve the same protection and care as the Tower's Crown Jewels.

Sometimes it may seem that the only birds we're interested in  here in London are peregrines, sparrows and swifts.  We do focus on them a lot, but that's because simple actions can help support and protect them. London is in fact swimming in wildlife and we like to shout about that too.

Last Friday saw the award ceremony for our Mind the Bird photo competition. Hosted by Richard Parry, Interim Managing Director of London Underground, the event was held at Transport for London's Broadway HQ in Westminster. The standards were incredibly high and the range of birds proves how diverse London's wild bird population really is. You can still see the images on our Flickr site.

£2.99 for 175g, the blackberries in my supermarket. The hedgerows round Hackney are now groaning under the weight of some of the juiciest, plumpest blackberries I've seen in years. Yet people will pay two-pence a gram for something they could harvest for free.

Lucky for me, this ripening comes just as the schools break-up, so I've got plenty of help from my daughters to take full advantage of nature's bounty.

Evolution makes sure that wildlife has what it needs, when it needs it. That's why breeding seasons invariably coincide with peak availability of natural, seasonal foods. We people have drifted away from this notion as far is food concerned, but birds are struggling to keep up with it. Simple supply and demand economics - market forces. That's another reason why the impact of climate change is so concerning. If our weather patterns change, wildlife will struggle to adapt and in some cases, will fail.

The importance of feasting was brought home to me at the weekend when I joined neighbours for a drink and a chat in the street. I got to know the names of people I see daily as we leave for work. Embarrassingly, all we normally manage is the hint of a nod and a mumbled "ello". Worst still, I discovered there are people who live mere metres from me that I have never even seen. After our revelatory weekend encounters it was really nice this morning to smile, wave and chat with others from our 'colony' as we all set-off on our daily routines.

Imagine then the birds that visit us in summer and are even now preparing themselves for the return journeys. Back to places like Africa and eastern Europe. Blackberries and the rest of our bountiful hedgerows, rail-sidings, gardens, parks and waterways are mere pit-stops for them in the race to survive. Wouldn't it be nice if they could return year-after-year safe in the knowledge that their family homes won't be destroyed and that there's food here to support them?

We can do more to stock these pit-stops to ensure swifts, martins and other migratory birds survive and flourish year-after-year. OK, brambles and nettles may not be welcome in every garden, but how about leaving a little patch of them? If you think space is an issue, consider the recent calculation that the UK has some 600 acres of growing space on windowsills. How about planting some nectar rich flowers in a windowbox? That will support insects, which support spiders and birds.

Be a good neighbour to wildlife. Chances are the birds that nest in your eaves or trees have ancestors who lived there long before you ever did. To find out more about creating a wildlife pit-stop, visit our gardening pages or sign-up to our Homes for Wildlife project.

Don't forget we're down at the Tate Modern on the southbank, showcasing a pair of wild peregrines roosting on the Tate chimney. It's free and it's awesome, as advertised on ITV London, Sunday evening.

Forget soft and fluffy, think the terminator of pigeons on wings.

There'll be no explosions, except for the odd puff of feathers from their lunch, but we could have high speed chases. It's our Date at the Tate running through-out the school holidays.

We'll bring you real life action, drama, passion and blood-lust aplenty. Join us to see a pair of the world's fastest creatures, and maybe, a couple of their off-spring too! It's our annual peregrine watch.

Imagine watching a fighter jet at full throttle with it's after-burners splintering the air behind it. Then consider that a peregrine can dive at speeds of about 200 body lengths per second, 50 body lengths faster than that speeding jet!  Peregrines can see prey a mile off and catch their dinner, usually a pigeon, mid-flight. Snatching it from the air with such ferocity that death is usually instantaneous. That's the action and blood-lust.

As for passion and drama. Our Tate female arrived in London with a male in 2003. She and her then partner were named Misty and Houdini. He mysteriously vanished in 2006/07 and her present partner, Bert, was an almost instant replacement. He's a younger man and the pair immediately had a large brood of four chicks. This year, Bert was tempted by a younger female and at one point, was the proud father of some six eggs! However, the nest and eggs of the younger female failed and Bert slunk back to Misty, his tail between his legs and his head hung in shame. Actually, that last bit's rubbish, but the soap opera of their relationship is accurate.

They had three chicks this year, two females and a male. All appear to have fledged successfuly. Last year they had three, but one died after flying into the glass sides of a footbridge in the City. Misty and Bert have taught their offspring to fly, hunt, dive-bomb their dinner and the other essentials of survining in the wild, all be it in London rather than a cliff face in a rural setting.

When we started showing off Misty and Houdini, they were believed to be the first breeding pairs of peregrines in the Capital. Now we have a growing number, with at least ten breeding pairs, possibly a dozen. It's hard to keep track of them as only one peregrine in London appears to have coloured rings on her legs. That one we've traced back to the southcoast near Brighton. She was born on a coastal cliff but has taken a shine to a ledge at Charring Cross Hospital.

We're working with colleagues, including the Metropolitan Police's Wildlife Crime Unit, to monitor and protect all of these birds. If you know of any, do let us know. The more information we have about these amazing birds, the more we'll be able to do to help them live successfully alongside us human residents.

You'll find us alongside the Millennium Bridge outside the Tate Modern on the Southbank every day from this Saturday, noon till 7pm, right through until Sunday, 13 September. Don't miss one of the best shows in town. Oh, and after you've seen the birds this weekend, wander further along the southbank, to Lambeth's Garden Museum for their Wildflower Weekend. This is where you can discover what you can do to help London's wildlife in your garden, or join our Homes for Wildlife project for FREE personalised gardening advice.

Speaking, as I was at the start of this blog, about terminators. Please do take time to sign our Birds of Prey petition to save peregrines and other falcons, hawks and eagles from illegal persecution. They're being hunted down, shot and poisoned simply because some people can't live alongside them for a number of spurious and often patheticly 'historic' reasons.

Sun bathing blackbirds are a thing to behold. The first time I saw one, I thought I was looking at a nesting moorhen with a chick under each wing. A second, closer, look revealed it for a puffed out blackbird with fully extended wings and fanned tail feathers.

So why do blackbirds sunbathe? I don't know, but there are a few theories. First and most obvious is that they like it. Second, they do it to maintain body temperature. Theory number three is that it's a way of maintaining feathers in good condition. It's probably a mix of all three.

Lots of birds do this sun and dust bathing, but it seems most do it out of sight. Blackbirds are less shy and are fond of open spaces, so we're more likely to come across them mid-bathe.No bird, to my knowledge, has yet taken to using our Skinny Dipper soaps. This range is made without palm oil, phosphates or parabens and I happen to really like Lemon Balm and Gardener's soaps. Profits help fund our conservation work so you can both smell and feel good when using it.

 A great victory achieved thanks to cash from the sale of our products and supporters contributions is that at Crowthorne, west of London. rare heathland habitat was threatened by plans for a 975 home development. The developers were told by the government to scrap the scheme, on the grounds that it would cause irreparable harm to the Thames Basin Heaths. We couldn't have afforded the time and effort required to build a case against this development without funding.

The RSPB's conservation officers tackle some 1,200 cases like this each year and some of these cases can drag-on for several years. Each has implications for future developments, as the results inform future applications. So if one site is protected for wildlife, it means similar cases will face the same restrictions. We have a high success rate and are proud of our achievements. We're not anti-development we simply want sustainable development, which is good for people, for wildlife and the economy.

Find out more by visiting our webpages or ask a member of staff at our stand [B/80 near the Floral Marquee] at the Hampton Court Flower Show this week.