Sparrers

Introducing some new visitors to the garden, the Cockney Sparrers (or sparrows, if you insist). Cheery chirpy Cockney sparrows, mate, that's what they are, lawd elp us. They're not one of the species that learned to do the trick with the foil bottle tops - this is a bit of artistic licence - but they have developed an few better tricks.

In France, I've seen them inside hypermarkets, where they perch in the rafters and then fly down to the shop floor to see what they can tear open on the shelves. They're very big on nuts, of course, but they also have a taste for refined sugar. One day they will find the breakfast cereal aisle, discover the Honey Nut Loops and it will all be over.

Meanwhile, in the Oxford Services off the M40 (imagine a truck stop on the interstate, make the architecture a bit nicer and the food a lot worse) I was joined at my table by a fearless sparrow who had a taste for Burger King fries. He flew onto the table top and then edged slowly towards the half eaten packet of fries, watching me to see what my reaction would be, then backing off a few inches whenever I dipped my hand into the packet to get another fry out. Eventually I let him have last few. And that's when he called his mates…