Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose

It’s bliss today. No post, no papers, no possibility of getting to work.
Two hours of heavy snow at dusk yesterday means that we have the perfect excuse to take it easy.

Enjoying the Slow Life I picked up the 1896 volume of The Garden (see Saturday’s posting) and my eye was caught by an article headed “Scarcity of small birds”. It began “I never remember a scarcity of small birds as at present. Robins, wrens and hedge sparrows are only seen here and there.” 

By coincidence there was a headline in yesterday’s Telegraph: “Robins will be a rarer sight in gardens this Christmas” The story was prompted by a report issued by the British Trust for Ornithology saying that the number of robins is 27% lower than average and that the population of wrens has fallen by 20%. No doubt the same story will be told 114 years from now- and meanwhile it is reassuring to see the robins pecking away as usual on the bird table in my garden.