WRENS were particularly active in my part of the world during the weeks before Christmas. Not only were they singing in their unusually loud voices, they could also be seen popping in and out of hedgerows and exploring garden borders, seeking food or merely shelter.

One was showing very keen interest in my garage window ledge! I suspect there was something of interest living between the stones and woodwork.

Normally one would expect this kind of bustling behaviour in February or March as they prepare for the coming of spring and their new breeding season, but the period in question was unusually mild and sunny. I wondered if the birds' natural calendar had been disrupted by the unseasonal weather of that time and just hoped they did not decide to start nest-building.

On one occasion before Christmas I could hear two wrens singing for all they were worth while perched in hedgerows only feet away from each other at opposite sides of the lane. So focused were they that they continued even though I was striding past and a kestrel was hovering overhead.

Although I could not see the birds, and although it is almost impossible for humans to distinguish the male from the female, I felt sure this was a pair of perky males doing battle over some disputed territory. Each bird was doing its best to impress upon the other the extent of its boundaries, something they would normally do during the breeding season.

The extent of a territory can vary between two and six acres, but the odd thing is that a wren will protect its patch only against other wrens. Birds of different species are permitted entry by the dominant wren and this might be associated with the availability of food and cover within his chosen area. For example, he will happily share his ground with robins or dunnocks or even something larger.

As I am compiling these notes some weeks ahead of publication, I cannot forecast the weather for today, although there were severe snowfalls on the east coast of America in early December. Some experts believe we get the American weather about six weeks afterwards - and that means it could arrive about now!

Others insist the American weather has no effect upon us, the argument being that there is a lot of ocean between us which can radically change the climatic patterns.

However, a period of severe weather can spell doom to our unfortunate little wrens. They are such tiny birds that they soon fall prey to very cold and wintry conditions. I have heard reports of up to a dozen squeezing into a disused wren's nest in an attempt to keep warm and dry, but usually the weather is the victor, especially if it persists for a few weeks.

Many thousands of wrens can die in just one winter, as they did in 1963, and it takes some years for the resident population to recover.

The male wren is a wonderful little character. When the time for breeding approaches, he will build seven or eight beautifully-constructed, domed nests of dried grass, feathers, wool, hair, moss and leaves. The reason for this is that when he builds the first, he offers it to his mate. If she rejects it, he builds another and then another and so on until she is completely satisfied with his assiduous endeavours. Only then will she line it with feathers and use it for her clutch of up to eight eggs. Such devotion to his mate must surely earn him some modest praise or even a nice reward.

Every year at this stage I review the past 12 months in an attempt to highlight the topics in this column which have produced the most correspondence.

As regular readers know, these notes have always generated a wonderful flow of letters. Indeed, they did so long before I inherited the mantle of the late and great Maj Jack Fairfax-Blakeborough and it is an undisputed fact that such correspondence is the lifeblood of Countryman's Diary.

Without such an interesting input, it would be difficult to sustain a weekly budget of this type and I thank all who have contacted me during the past year.

Of enduring interest is the bird life of our countryside. Many, if not most, of my incoming letters have concerned themselves with birds as readers have either noticed unusual behaviour or spotted an interesting species.

There has been everything from a survey of house sparrows via an aggressive grouse to reports about a nightingale being sighted in Great Ayton, but starlings came in for some criticism due to their noisy and dirty behaviour when they roost in large flocks.

Wild animals provided an almost equal amount of interest, with more than a little concern over the deaths of badgers on our roads, and also their reputed link with bovine tuberculosis. Whether cattle infect badgers with bovine TB or badgers infect cattle is an argument that has never been satisfactorily resolved, although current research suggests that badgers are not as guilty as previously thought.

In recent weeks, I received several letters about the sighting of ermine stoats in our region, with one reader writing to say she had witnessed a stoat circling a rabbit until it was unable to move. Perhaps that is a variation on the theory that a stoat can hypnotise a rabbit into fatal submission? It then managed to drag away the rabbit, despite it being much larger than its attacker.

Our insect life has also produced some interesting letters, particularly the country person's habit of telling the bees about a death in the family and bees' links with nineteenth century funeral customs. Perhaps the insect which generated the most interest was the humming bird hawk moth. A reader at Hovingham spotted this very rare and extremely distinctive moth hovering before flowers in her garden and was astonished because it was so rare and much further north than one might expect.

As a consequence, several readers wrote with sightings much further north than Hovingham. One was seen on the Wensleydale Railway station at Leeming, another at Melsonby and yet another in Darlington. Truly a feast of humming bird hawk moths which set us all aflutter!

Litter is becoming an increasingly worrying aspect of country life, with road-users casting their junk into the gutters and on to verges, and ramblers throwing their waste along the routes of public footpaths. From time to time, I sound off within this column, but readers continue to express their own concern. Within the last couple of weeks, my wife and I walked in the countryside on a little-known field path and came across a plastic sandwich wrapper, a plastic drinks bottle and a crisp packet, all having been very recently discarded. How can people be so thoughtless?

The weather had not had time to affect them, but how can one prevent this, especially when litter louts discard their rubbish beyond the sight of witnesses? The answer might be powerful new laws to counter this anti-social behaviour, but their enforcement will be almost impossible.

That is the real problem. Laws do exist, but are largely ignored. One can only speculate that soon the countryside will be like those dreadful urban areas which are ankle deep in litter.

Other topics included the vagaries of our weather and worries about global warming and we discussed local dialects with due emphasis on horse terms, ploughing terms and domestic terms such as the owsing tin. Aspects of local history and folklore are always popular - it was pleasing to receive letters about Hello Bridge, Bedale Castle and the alum mines at Loftus, not forgetting the trolls of Norway!

Tuesday is Old Christmas Day and I might have misled readers with references to this on December 6!

December 6 is the feast day of St Nicholas and in some places, such as Holland, Santa Claus (St Nicholas) comes on this day with presents for the children. The giving of presents and the birth of Christ were originally quite separate issues, the birth of Christ being essentially a religious occasion. Eventually, the Pope established that Christ was born on December 25.

In Norse folklore, the god Odin used to fly through the skies on a sleigh hauled by reindeer to give presents to children. With the arrival of Christianity, the homely figure of St Nicholas (the patron saint of children and also a giver of presents) replaced Odin. Consequently, Father Christmas is an amalgamation of the two.

Old Christmas Day on January 6 is the result of our calendar changes of 1752