Country diary: these little birds do bang on

Sandy, Bedfordshire: While some birds plunder the scales for melody, the house sparrows strike a percussive note

The most familiar and enigmatic garden birds have been feeding on nothing again. Six beaks probed the branches of the winter-bare rose bush, four beaks descended to peck at the ground beneath, one beak washed her meal down with a sip from the pond. Every day they return and every day I scan the soil, and interrogate the impervious hide of the rose, for anything edible, in vain. Do the birds milk the thorns?