■ Keep cats and dogs indoors after dusk.

■ Ensure trees and roosting spots are safe from cats - put wide collars around tree trunks and large tree branches to stop cats encroaching while bats are feeding or sleeping.

■ Allow some of your lawn to go to seed for seed-eating birds.

■ Leave spiders' webs on your eaves for birds to use in their nests.

■ A small, solar-powered garden light will attract insects for night-flying birds and bats - and for frogs, too, if it's near a pond.

■ Use mulch. Mulch feeds worms and other small creatures, and they'll feed birds and lizards. Mulch is also a great shelter for all sorts of things.

■ Don't scrape lichen off trees — it's nesting material for birds.

■ Paperbarks and other trees with loose bark also provide nesting material. No paperbarks? Leave the castings from your brush or comb near the bird feeder and they'll probably be foraged instead.

■ Cover chimney tops with chicken wire to stop possums falling in.

■ Avoid pesticides and herbicides.