Finish digging your beds and you could add compost to improve your soil for next year.

Why not use all those leaves you've been raking recently and spread them under your hedges and shrubs. It's a good way to work up an appetite for a mince pie or two!

We'll be feeling full and sleepy after our Christmas dinner but before you sink into your armchair make sure your birds are well fed too.

It may have seemed quiet in our gardens up until now as the mild early winter meant berries were still in abundance on hedgerows and in the wider countryside.

But as predicted the cold has now hit and garden birds will rely increasingly on anything you leave out for them.

Give them leftover treats like pastry and cake crumbs, potatoes and grated cheese in addition to any seed mixes you have.

As well as garden favourites returning from the countryside there will be lots of other visitors. Some of them will mingle in seamlessly with our resident birds but may actually be over from places like Scandavania.

Next time you're watching a 'local' blackbird devouring your holly berries, check whether it looks a little bit 'shifty!' Birds from Northern countries are much less at home in gardens and near people and do behave differently.

In the afternoons particularly, look out for skeins of gulls. They'll be heading purposefully to water where they will spend the night roosting.

You may also see flocks of starlings and thrushes flying off to roost in nearby woods.

If you need a breather from the busy stores and all that last minute Christmas shopping, step outside and look for pied wagtails roosting on warm buildings, waxwings in car parks and sparrows and starlings swooping amongst shoppers.

There are wildlife moments to be had in even the most manic settings!

Merry Christmas, Kate

For more information on wildlife gardening visit www.rspb.org.uk/hfw.