A HAPPY New Year to all my readers - some of whom, from time to time, send such pure golden nuggets of information! Unfortunately, the weekly article is submitted some ten days before printing and that, leads to a time lag when passing on both reader's information and my own.

Nor is there space for illustration, which is a great pity for, with natural history perhaps more than any other subject, "one picture is worth a thousand words!"

At the time of writing, the old year is not yet quite dead, the sun is shining from a cloudless sky, blue white hoarfrost dodges weak sunlight in the shadows, and we have seen the winter thrushes.

A small flock of perhaps 30, the birds alighted briefly in the field behind this house and proceeded to probe the grass tussocks.

These are places where cowpats have enriched the soil over the summer, each one ensuring a thick growth of herbage.

The birds - every one of them - were redwings - those tiny thrushes from the taiga of Siberia; or, just as likely, from the countryside about Iceland's capital, Reykjavik.

Some might even be Scots, of the few birds bred in the high north of that land.

Several showed a flicker of pure white on the inner half of wing feathers, betraying juvenile birds - those hatched in the spring of 2000.

To quote the book: "Juvenile terrtials and retained outer wing coverts have white tips, revealing age..."

We saw these clearly because the birds (100 yards away at most) were watched with binoculars for several minutes, busy feeding, completely unaware of any human presence.

Feeding - but on what? My guess is Tipulid larvae - the leather jacket grubs of the cranefly, the daddy longlegs of late summer meadows.

Redwings do love most scarlet berries of late autumn and winter, but I would suggest that grassland invertebrata makes welcome addition to other cold season diet.

Snow buntings have been recorded hunting similar prey on the Lancashire moors.

They seek larvae in the bases of large clumps of Molinia, the lovely purple moor grass of wet, peaty upland.

The buntings (which, much to the mirth of my grandchildren, means 'large buttocked' - possibly a euphemistic version of the Old Welsh 'bontinog') sought gall midge larvae, tiny relatives of garden aphids investing poplar leaves.

All of which now means that to satisfy my own curiosity I must go and dig into those grass clumps and see what the redwings were after.

I must - but when?

Which brings me to the subject - once again - of the many trees laden with bunches of withered ash keys still clinging to leafless twigs.

The crop this year seems enormous, but for all that there is not a bullfinch in sight.

The ash, excellent indicator of base rich ground, often a tall, stately tree, close relative of the squat and craggy Mediterranean olive, bears fruit rich in oil - a lifesaver for the bullfinch when the weather is hard.

Winter or summer, however, these lovely birds seem to remain scarce throughout much of the county.

In Furness, I have found no more than a few pairs.

Some about Greenodd, in hawthorn scrub surrounding the ancient iron ore mines at Plumpton, on the Leven estuary, and among the oaks and coppiced birches of the Rusland Valley.

Another winter food taken readily by the lovely 'bullie' is common docking seed.

One would think that the red-brown, withered spires of this plant in winter would contain little nourishment for any organism - but the bullfinches do eat such dry, hard seed readily enough.

However, after looking long and hard for bullfinches among the ash trees in many places - or seeking them clinging to the docking stalks - we have seen none.

No doubt some reader will be lucky enough to have them nearby - and report it - which will make us feel terrible.

Years ago, these birds visited our garden regularly; in high summer and early autumn, we were visited often by a pair of these birds with two or three young in attendance.

That was long ago and today bullfinches generally are rather scarce in many parts of the country.