Feathered Felons, or "B****y Birds!"

I am a friend to birds. My little back yard has two bird seed feeders, fat balls, peanuts, home made wholemeal breadcrumbs, and a separate covered bird table for the shy little ones. I keep them all topped up at all times, and make sure they have a bowl of clean water. I am even cultivating (or deliberately chose not to weed out) a teasel which is now over seven feet tall and bears 19 flower heads, just so the goldfinches will have somewhere nice to come this winter. Mostly I am visited by sparrows, but there are many others as well. Lots of juvenile blackbirds at the moment, for example.

What with the gravel patch where the rotary clothes line goes and the vertical scree around the edges there's not much room in my garden for 'real' plants, especially edible ones, but I do have two blueberries, two strawberries and a tomato in pots. I've been eagerly watching my small crop of blueberries swell and ripen since early March. Two days ago they were almost ripe, bluish but not quite the colour they are in the supermarket. Yesterday it rained all day and the garden was full of birds. Today the sun is shining, there isn't a bird in sight and my blueberries are gone! And the first and biggest tomato, which was just beginning to change colour, is on the gravel, neatly hollowed out. I must confess to a certain disappointment. In hindsight, however, I suppose it was inevitable - they are encouraged to eat everything else, why would the blueberries be any different? Is it worth trying to save the four on one plant and two on the other, yet unripe, they left me? No, not now. Next year, netting. Maybe.