A time for dinky birds and winter-kings

Airedale, West Yorkshire All of these birds - none weighing more than an ounce, and the smallest of them barely tipping the scales against a 10p piece - have a crisp, spruce look

At this time of year, it can sometimes seem as though the bare trees have been decked out with toy birds. The broad-spreading alder across the river is tinged purple-pink (the fuchsia-coloured catkins persist deep into the winter) and the branches are busy with tinkling finches: green siskins, bright motley goldfinches, chaffinches in pink and soft greys.

I pause on the riverbank as a detachment of long-tailed tits, perhaps a dozen or so, makes its shuttling way through the willows. For a few moments I'm surrounded by them, a cloud of them; beneath the familiar hubbub of zinging tsees and tsirrups, I can hear their soft chut, chut contact-calls. Dinkiest of all are the two tiny goldcrests that pick over a low-hanging ash branch while working through a programme of deft variations on the theme "upside-down".