Birds busy with tasks for new season

THE birds are back in the garden, not that they were ever gone.

They were simply keeping a low profile while that annual hazardous, uncomfortable but necessary process of moulting old feathers and acquiring new ones were in train.

During August, there was no sign of the robin hopping in front of the garden spade. Somewhere in the undergrowth or briar patch it was shedding and replacing feathers day by day rather than all at once. A naked, flightless robin would be like a plucked chicken in a supermarket for a marauding cat.