While humans can find reasons for changes in weather, either temporary or as an indication of a trend, animals often have to make unexpected adjustments. This applies, writes a south Dublin reader, very much in his own garden, where there has been some alteration in the behaviour of his assorted winged residents.
Not that he can offer answers to all that is happening there; particularly unexplained is that despite uninterrupted bird food, his sparrow flock of some 30 birds has disappeared for the first time in his eight-year occupation of the house.
As a result he has been particularly assiduous in helping other birds by putting out foods suitable for normally unwanted pigeons, scald crows and even magpies, which are the enemies of the sparrows at nesting time. Raking over a patch of frozen bare soil is a great attraction for the ground feeders, he says, and he also turns over a few rocks to expose juicy grubs. He has the right ideas.
He finds that cold weather makes the birds more daring in their need for food. Even crows come near to the back door, and one pigeon comes on the kitchen sill and peers though the window hungrily. Blue tits, and occasionally a coal tit, make extra good use of the nut feeder in the frosty weather.
Our friend, a keen fish-pond owner, says I should remind others that ice layers on outdoor ponds should be broken very gently to release neutral pond gases, but his fish, sunk into weeds in seemingly disgusted motionless non-eating hibernation, make him wonder if the common-or-garden goldfish is really a cold water fish at all. January is a stinker, isn't it?