I'VE just finished an article on the Big Garden Birdwatch, which is this weekend. I hope you'll join in, at the very least so I'm not the only one sitting in the garden, freezing my ears off, trying to work out which is a blue tit, which is a long-tailed tit and which is a great tit and hoping the cats don't make me get my numbers wrong by the end of the day by eating one of my statistics. I told the editor that it was going to be the only time I could legitimately get the word tit into a headline, but he went a funny colour so I hurriedly changed the subject. Birds are fascinating creatures. I don't suppose anyone ever thinks of it, but they are our most visible wildlife. How often do you see other wild creatures? The odd vole, the occasional frog, a slinky fox at night in the headlights of the car. Land-bound wild animals have learned to avoid humans, birds positively flaunt themselves in our gardens, despite the ever-present danger of cats. At any one time in my garden I can see half a dozen species of birds, ranging from huge rooks to tiny green finishes, from the suicidal pigeon which dive bombs the grey cat to hopping robins watching every movement of my garden spade. There are always a few seagulls too, birds which have probably never visited the seaside, even for a day trip, and plenty of rooks and magpies. You certainly never see wild animals like this, unless you're a wildlife expert who seem to trip over them in every corner of the wild wood, although I suspect they have to hang around an awful long time to come across three foxes, a badger, eight voles and a weasel on what they claim is the same half-hour television programme. One of the surprising results of previous surveys has been that some species not endemic to this country are now becoming acclimatised. One of them is the collared dove, which only appeared in the 1950s. Now they are thriving and the next time you look down the garden and see a bird with a big chest eating your cabbages you should probably not shout 'that b....y pigeon's at my cabbages again', but insert 'collared dove' instead. The other new arrival is even more surprising. Green ring necked parakeets can be seen in large flocks in the South East. These are thought to be escapees from captivity, presumably quite a lot of escapees with both male and female included, because they are now thriving with numbers growing each year. The Daily Telegraph ran an article which basically said that they were no real trouble even thought they have large beaks. They don't, it said, attack other birds, or people, or eat too many crops. This, naturally, led to furious letters the next day stating that however pretty flocks of green parakeets were they were noisy, messy, destructive and given to breakfasting off people's fruit trees. In fact, there were some who would like to take their given name literally – wring neck the parakeets. It's surprising that birds which originated in a hot country can become naturalised in Britain. What next? Budgies chatting in the bushes? Canaries singing from the camellias? What I would really like to see would be a few wild parrots in the garden. I can imagine the cats' surprise if, on one of their usually fruitless stalking manouevres, a large green, red and blue bird suddenly leaned over from the branch it was perched on and said: 'Don't even think of it, sunshine.' Escaped animals and birds are not particularly new to this country. Although perhaps not in the same numbers as the parakeets. During my career I have often had to write about animals on the run, usually having escaped from private zoos or owners who go one better than owning a cat or a dog. There was an escaped python, found in a neighbour's attic after being on the run, or should that be on the slither, for a week. His owner stated that: 'He wouldn't hurt a fly'. Owners of exotic pets always say they wouldn't hurt a fly, which is supposed to lull you into a sense of security should you approach a bad tempered snake or snarling tiger. Personally, I would rather they said: 'He wouldn't hurt a person'. Actually, owners of all anti-social pets use the fly excuse. Many a time I've sat through dangerous dog court cases and the owner, even though admitting that Fido had taken a chunk out of Mrs Jones's leg, have tried to lead us to believe than normally he wouldn't so much as sniff in the direction of a fly so Mrs Jones may have done something to annoy him. Perhaps given him a bit of a hard look. Why a fly? We all kill flies, we are rarely tempted to bite a Mrs Jones. Not just animals escape. I once did a story about escaped tarantulas which involved visiting a rather odd man who had a housefull of insects and reptiles. 'Do you want to see my scorpions?' he said when I edged into his sitting room, carefully avoiding a lizard on the sofa. I said I'd pass on that one. He didn't use the fly excuse, possibly because nobody would believe that spider didn't eat flies, but he did assure me that his three missing tarantulas were harmless. I said I thought they ate birds in the wild, and he got quite touchy and said he didn't know about that but they only attacked people when they were frightened. I thought that one of his neighbours, when faced with a large hairy spider the size of a tea plate, might be the one who was frightened. He never did find them. Moving to the Westcountry, I soon heard tales about the beast of Bodmin – although initially it was the beast of Dartmoor – and the proven sightings of wild porcupines roaming that same moor. Since then there have been numerous stories about the sighting of the big wild cat, or cats. Sadly, no- one ever managed to get a picture of the big cat, although some drew it and it always looked like an animal out of the Jungle Book. There have been blurry pictures, which quite frankly look like somebody's big ginger tom next to a very small daisy plant but you would think that in these days of digital cameras which are even on telephones that somebody could do better. I'm not saying they don't exist. I know in Canada, where wild cats abound, they are rarely seen and can move so silently that few people spot them until they realise they are on the menu for dinner. Fortunately, dinner material on the moor is more acceptable in the form of bunny rabbits rather than tough old people in green wellies and wax coats. When I heard about the porcupines I thought it might be a journalistic ploy to fill their columns in August but it did turn out to be true, although we never got a picture. The porcupines had escaped from captivity, having previously been owned by someone who obviously wasn't into cuddly pets. They must have found the moorland quite hospitable because they allegedly bred. Warnings were put out that although not known for going for your throat, they did have a habit of shooting their quills when surprised, which could cause nasty abrasions and, depending on where they landed, make the victim aware of just how many friends they had when it came to pulling them out. Walkers on the moor were therefore to be fairly careful and stay on the lookout for a surprised porcupine with its backside in the air and taking aim. My favourite escape story was in recent years, when Bert the Capybara did a runner from Porfell animal park at Lanreath. Capybaras are – all we who wrote about him found out by going to the library and looking it up (this was pre-internet days) – the largest rodents and are related to guinea pigs. Bert was on the run for some time, with a few sightings in and around the neighbourhood but no problems. Then he was run to earth, or rather water, on an island in a nearby fishing lake. One environmental officer gave a statement saying that wild animals couldn't be allowed to stay at liberty in case they bred. The likelihood of Bert finding another escaped Capybara, never mind a female one, in the environs of Bodmin Moor, or indeed in the whole of the South West, was about a zillion to one but I suppose you can't be too careful if you're in the environmental department. So Bert was captured and taken back to his home at Porfell, where he still resides today. To keep him happy he was quickly provided with a female, called Bertha, which was meant to quell his wanderlust and replace it with just lust. It's obviously worked. Bert, of course, was everything journalists love. He had a funny name, he was big, cuddly, non- aggressive, photogenic and sex starved. Compared to a rampant quill shooting porcupine or even a squawking fruit tree desecrating parakeet, he was a dream.