Big bird watch

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (the RSPB) is having its big bird watch this weekend. Gardeners and homeowners around the country are asked to watch their gardens for an hour and identify the different birds and count them up. You're then asked to report the most frequently sighted species.

This has been going on since 1979, and the RSPB has built up a "scientifically valuable" database. People in England take this kind of thing seriously, it's one of the things I find endearing about this country.

I won't be participating. It's too cold for one thing, though I suppose you can watch from the window. Also, my bird ID skills are poor. But I suppose they're good enough to identify the garbage birds that appear in my garden. (Pigeons, wood pigeons, black birds of some type, and overflights by seagulls).

A couple of years ago there wasn't a living bird in my garden. There are cats all up and down our street, nearly everybody has at least one, and I assumed that this was the cause. My next door neighbours had two cats and when they moved they took the cats with them. Within months, the birds and squirrels returned to the back gardens along our road. At least one of them must have been a superb killer.

We could probably have more birds if we got a bird feeder, but the Vol-in-Law won't let me. I had a bird feeder when we lived in Sheffield without cats. He didn't like my motives. He wanted to know why I wanted a bird feeder when I'm not even that fond of birds. I told him that though I didn't like birds, I liked cats, and feeders attract birds and birds attract cats.