Birds are busy feeding in the day and are very visible as there is so little cover. Migrating winter visitors such as redwings and siskins are still here, while some resident garden birds are already nesting and laying their first clutches of eggs. Moles are still on the move below ground while, up above, foxes seem to find voles and mice to feed on, no matter how hard the weather gets.

Siskins and other temporary residents to our shores are easy to spot on the bare winter branches, making the most of the hours of daylight for feeding.

When Dutch elm disease laid waste to the hedgerows of England, there was a boom in woodpecker numbers, as they had so much dead wood to peck on and so many grubs to dig out. As more trees in urban streets suffer from root disturbance caused by building work, perhaps more woodpeckers will provide some compensation. In February, they hammer away on any dead branches. Look out for the great spotted woodpecker and its more elusive cousin, the smaller lesser spotted woodpecker.

There are a few moments every year that are the highlights of the garden wildlife calendar, the first scream of arriving swifts in May, the first bird to pop out of a nest-box, the first autumn raspberry eaten by the blackbirds. The best moment, though, is the morning the frogs appear. One day in February the pond comes alive with males croaking as they wait for the females, the rough and tumble, the slippery mating and the gallons of frog-spawn that will hatch into a mass of tadpoles by mid-March.

Hazel

There are few more beautiful sights than a hazel, Corylus avellana, hanging with yellow-green catkins when almost every other plant is dormant. Tap a twig, release a cloud of pollen to be picked up by the tiny female flowers and by autumn you should have clusters of hazelnuts. Hazel is easy to grow from seed and, what's more, you can cut stems to the ground every few years and they will always grow back. Indeed, the hazel coppice cycle has been followed in some woods for almost 1,000 years and the plants are still thriving. If you're short of space, hazel can be woven into a mixed hedge or even fan-trained against a wall.