Animals take a shine to more gardens

IT may be a sign of growing tolerance of wildlife, but more people are now making their gardens animal-friendly.

We often hear stories about foxes, for example, being regularly seen on city streets and even coming up to doors of houses looking for food, so inner city and suburban gardens can be made attractive to wildlife.

Gardens offer wildlife an alternative habitat and, for some species, like hedgehogs, badgers, rabbits, squirrels and foxes, an essential corridor linking areas of countryside that could otherwise be cut off from them.