Just the other morning looking skywards, I watched and envied a wood pigeon flying fast and direct and thought ‘Oh! For such freedom of the sky’.

But after the initial euphoria I reflected on the reasons for the early morning flight, and of course the truth is the daily quest to fill its crop and thereby stay alive — it was seeking food. With the weather now colder, energy reserves are stretched to the limit, and my head-in-the-clouds view of this bird’s free and carefree flight is badly misplaced. Many animals build up stocks of energy in the form of fat deposits (I am one) to see themselves through the more sparse times of the year, but because birds rely on flight, this is achieved through the lightness of their bodies.

There is, therefore, a relatively small tolerance between the fat reserves of birds and starvation. Consequently, survival is pretty much dependent on finding fresh food daily and species such as the tiny goldcrest, pictured, and jenny wren exist on a knife edge, subject to just a few grams of weight loss leaving them unable to sustain themselves through the cold winter nights.

With the relatively modern practice of stripping many hedges and rough grassland areas with the all-consuming ‘flail cutter’ important wildlife lifelines are literally severed. Much of the yearly berry crop is tragically wasted and small rodent cover is destroyed. So how can we help? Well we can be a little less tidy in our gardens leaving fallen leaves round the borders and under the shrubs, controlling the urge to prune hard and leaving patches of ground to overwinter without taking on the agricultural obsession of destructive tidiness, and we can feed our garden birds.

This will not be an entirely unselfish act, as we will be rewarded with the close sighting of beautiful birds almost on our own doorstep.

It may be that Christmas will bring you presents in the form of cash, and if you wish to turn this into a lasting joy I suggest the purchase of wildlife prints. Two nationally, and internationally, renowned local sources can be found in the Didcot area; the bird illustrator and Oxfordshire county recorder Ian Lewington; and his brother Richard Lewington the wildlife illustrator who specialises in invertebrates, but is best known for his butterfly and moth illustrations. More details can be found by googling Ian Lewington bird illustrator or Richard Lewington wildlife illustrator.