Just outside our kitchen there is a small apple tree. With this late starting summer there is still some pink blossom that hasn’t blown off. When I came home from work there were two young Great Tits teaching themselves to fly amongst its braches. They must have come from the hole in the wall that runs up the other side of the garden twenty feet away.

They fluttered from branch to twig and as they landed swung precariously oblivious to the black cat and its steel paws and teeth that watched them from the patio. I don’t think the cat was beguiled by their charm but there might have been some admiration at their foolhardiness playing at flying so close to his nose.

They looked darker and more bedraggled than their parents and occasionally as one of them lost its balance in managed a somersault around the branch it clung onto shivering its feathers as it came up right.