Distracted

Back from a few days getting under Mum and Dad's feet again. Dad likes watching the garden birds and can't work out why they aren't coming to the feeders in their garden. I suggested that, with the weather being mild, the birds get all they need from the wild food that's around. They've got beetles, worms, and seed-heads for pudding, and it's all fresh organic stuff.

I told him that here at The House of Stories the massive holly is covered in berries, but the birds are leaving it alone. They always wait until the first hard frost, then raid it so efficiently that there's hardly a dot of red anywhere except on the very lowest branches.

This afternoon I was back to work, and today I chose to write at the dining room table. I should have known better. I had a perfect view of the garden and the holly tree and it was the constant movement that alerted me and made me look up.

The weather is still mild. No frost. And yet there was a thrush, a perfectly elegant picture book thrush perched on the holly tree with a berry in its beak. Then I saw another, and a pair of blackbirds. A couple of bluetits hopped about, and then the big gaudy wood pigeons arrived, four of them in the top branches like big kids in the little kids' playground. But the holly tree is big enough for them all, and I don't suppose the bluetits downstairs were even aware of the pigeons on the top floor.

It was a joy to see them, and I thank God for whoever planted the holly tree in the first place. But why are the birds taking the berries now? Do they know something I don't?