The birds stripped the berries off my fruit bushes in past years, so this year I spent a day putting up a fruit cage. I don’t remember the pigeons being so predatory – that’s one of the changes we’ve seen in this garden, along with the decline in hedgehogs and butterflies and the arrival of parakeets, red kites and police helicopters. It worked: this season the redcurrants were plump and the pigeons were thin.
MARSHALL COLMAN 