This is one of only four remaining fat balls from the bucket of 50 bought at the beginning of the month. I’m rationing them to two a day now.

So why are they so super-delicious this time? Is it because there are just so many babies around and they are all needing lots and lots of super high energy food so they can do all of the things babies need to do before they can function properly as adults? You know, little things like the little monochrome blue tits changing their drab grey for blue or starlings shedding their beige and getting their lustrous petrol-sheen and spots. Is it that the magpies are so greedy that they can scoff a whole one in no time? Perhaps. Is it that this batch of fat balls is just so super-delicious that the birds are all munching the lot then flying around the corner, flumping over onto their backs and groaning in a parody of me after my Christmas dinner?

…Or is it something else entirely…

We all know that it’s quite common for wild bird seed to contain cannabis seeds – there are plenty of stories of people coming into grief with the law over germinated seed under bird tables. Perhaps the seed that these balls were made from had a high proportion of said seed and the manufacturing process has turned it into the feathery equivalent of a hash brownie. Perhaps my little birds are all getting stoned and then getting the munchies. What do you think?