DO YOU remember when blue tits stole the cream from our milk? It was when everyone had milk delivered in bottles.

Somehow blue tits learnt to peck the metal top. When you went to get your milk from the doorstop the blue tits had been there before you and had got the cream.

When did they learn how to do this? How did they know there was something delicious for them under the foil top?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know that I did not like what they did. I wanted to be the first to open the milk for breakfast and not wonder where the blue tit had put his beak before dipping it into my milk bottle.

Even moving house did not solve the problem; the birds seemed to have passed on the trick to their neighbours and they too stole an easy drink.

We soon all learnt to leave a stone for the milkman to put on the top, to foil the little thieves.

You could even buy a special plastic milk bottle cap which did the job of the stone.

Nowadays, the blue tits don’t get the opportunity to steal the top of our milk because most people buy it from the supermarket.

But in our garden the blue tits are still up to their tricks, and this time it is with our fruit.

We have an unusual tree growing in our garden. Not many people know what it is. But a friend of mine came round recently, and she knew.

“It’s a medlar tree,” she said. She was right, but it’s not a very common tree and is usually only in old orchards.

It has small round, brown fruits and you must leave them on the tree.

They hang on weeks into winter and you have to be patient and wait until they are almost bad – ‘bletted’ is the correct term. You pick them when they begin to turn soft. Inside the fruit is a mushy brown paste and buried inside that are several quite large stones. It’s not to everyone’s taste but the blue tits seem to love it.

They sit on the medlar branches and edge towards their goal and then twist and turn like acrobats and almost get inside the fruit to peck the soft brown flesh.

They seem to have abandoned their milk top-pecking. And it is not because we do not have milk delivered – we do.

A milkman still delivers in glass bottles with foil tops. But our blue tits disregard this treat these days. So here is a puzzle – have they forgotten what is in the milk bottle?

When we first came here, they were pecking the tops, so what has happened?

I wonder if it is that we now have skimmed milk delivered and there is no cream.

Blue tits are discerning and are spurning our non-fat milk in favour of our medlars.

But we need not be worried because I picked some fruit to store in the garage, earlier. They are ready just about now, they are ‘bletted’.

We need to eat them soon, though, or they will go completely bad.

January treat anyone? Mushy brown, almost putrid paste anyone? Perhaps I’ll leave medlars to the blue tits after all.