Any minute now I am expecting the Obesity Police to knock on the door. Oh, not for me! I can still squeeze into a kaftan, despite unhelpful chocolate companies offering two for the price of one family-sized bars during Lent. No, it's the local bird population that I am worried about. My bird cake is going down a treat - a homemade concoction of lard, chopped peanuts and seeds - that has them queueing for miles.

Last year we bought one of those ready-made fat balls. Whether they took a dislike to the lurid green net bag or whether it was hung in the wrong tree, but they shunned it. It gradually shrivelled away, the victim of wind and rain erosion - not bird beaks. But now we have filled half a coconut shell with lard cake and hung it on the bay hedge, we have seen a much greater variety of birds in the garden.

Today we had a Blackcap here - a female one because it had a brown cap (or maybe I've just mistaken it for something else), a chaffinch, a song thrush, two blackbirds (having a fight), two robins (having a fight), greenfinches, sparrows, great tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits and starlings. A crow has tried to eat it, but can’t balance on the chestnut paling fence. Who knows what will appear tomorrow. The only drawback is I can’t keep up with demand. I made up another three coconut shells this morning, and one has half gone already. And it might be my imagination, but soon the robin will be too fat to have a fight - he's looking distinctly rotund.