Many keen gardeners are also enthusiastic bird-watchers - it seems to go with the territory so to speak.

We encourage birds into the garden with peanut feeders and supplies of sunflower seeds and they reward us not only with their engaging presence but also by eating many hundreds of aphids and other insect pests. It has slowly dawned on me over the years that one of the best ways of combining these two interests of gardening and bird watching is to grow things that birds like to eat.

I’m thinking in particular of shrubs and small trees that produce berries in autumn, a time when our gardens are in need of all the colour they can get. Many birds are attracted by ornamental berries - blackbirds, starlings, thrushes and mistle thrushes are regularly seen in fruiting trees and bushes, and if you are lucky you may also be visited by fieldfares, redwings and even waxwings.

For background planting, especially if you have plenty of space, grow yews, hawthorn, holly, elder and Viburnum opulus, the Guelder rose. For more prominent positions try cotoneaster (there are over 200 species to choose from) and pyracantha, stalwart favourites of both birds and gardeners.

I recently saw a stunning planting of cotoneaster on a steep bank along the boundary of a property - three or four different varieties with berry colours ranging from bright yellow, through vivid orange to deep red, a quite extraordinary display from such a common plant.

For a specimen planting, perhaps in a lawn or as a focal point in a border, some of the finest edible berries are found on Sorbus or rowan trees. Our own native rowan, Sorbus aucuparia, has orange-red berries, which appear in early September and which have largely been eaten by the end of the same month. Others, such as Sorbus commixta and Sorbus hupehensis, bear their berries much later and they seem to last longer on the tree (perhaps the birds prefer native tree berries).

There comes a point, however, in the birdwatching gardener’s year when he has to decide where his loyalties really lie. It is the point where the birds have eaten the last of his fine berries and have deserted his garden for richer pickings elsewhere. I suppose it’s the same feeling a chef gets when he or she has spent hours in the kitchen preparing a delicious meal, only to see it eaten in a very short space of time. The satisfaction must come not from the end result but in the knowledge of all those satisfied customers. Long may our feathered customers continue to share our gardens with us.

Jobs for the gardener this week

- Plant lily bulbs in the garden, at a depth of two to three times the height of the bulb. Add grit and leafmould to the soil to encourage strong growth.

- Prune indoor and outdoor grapevines, cutting back each side shoot to within one or two buds of the main stem.

- Begin consulting seed catalogues and planning which annuals, vegetables and bedding plants to grow next year.