Armchair birding

Keep your feeders topped up and enjoy learning more about your garden birds.

FEEDERS bring birds close to a window, where you can sit comfortably and watch from your favourite armchair. Make sure the feeder is high enough that you can see it and keep them topped up with food.

Seeing any bird close up is a privilege and a real treat – and you can learn a lot from carefully watching even the most familiar birds, like a Blue Tit or a Chaffinch. Look at the way the feathers lie, see how the feather tips make patterns such as wing-bars and eyestripes.

You might notice that the dull feather tips on a Chaffinch obscure the bright colours beneath, ready to wear off and reveal them in spring without the need to moult. Watch how different species deal with seeds: Greenfinches use their bigger bills to peel off the husk, Goldfinches use their delicate pincers to get at the nyger seed.

Jobs in the garden are not so urgent. You have already cleaned your feeders, checked and repaired your nestboxes and piled up bits of twigs and old logs. You could chop up the Christmas tree and use that to make little wildlife habitats.