Going bird-brained for goldfinches

Damien Enright on the charms of our winged friends

SYCAMORE leaves are lovely in the spring and summer, pastel green at first, then with long red stems, then with their winged seeds hanging like jewelry on the branches, then autumnal yellow and finally grey and damp underfoot, slippery and treacherous in wet weather, plastering the forest paths, the ugliest leaves of all.

The sycamore outside my workroom window still has some bedraggled leaves but amongst them, as I write, are perched a small charm of one of our loveliest native birds, goldfinches.