AS I settled upon our garden seat to enjoy my morning coffee, one of our resident house sparrows decided to join me. Not that he wanted a drink of coffee, of course, but he flew down to the patio only a very few feet away and busied himself finding titbits of food which were invisible to my eye.

This particular house sparrow - a cheeky male bird - usually sits on some guttering above our heads when we enjoy a meal or drink on the patio, and seems to enjoy chirping loudly whenever we make an appearance. It may be, of course, that to his ears, his loud and continuous chirping is music; perhaps he thinks he is serenading us with classical sparrow tunes but sadly, at times, he has to be encouraged to depart temporarily, not that he stays away for very long.

On this occasion, however, he was exploring the patio seeking food and then he turned his attention to some campanulas which are flourishing between the stones. I thought he was seeking titbits among the plants but he wasn't - instead, he began to eat the petals of the pretty blue flowers.

As I watched, he pulled several petals one by one from the campanulas and devoured them, apparently enjoying every moment of this experience. I did not shoo him away because those flowers are almost weedlike in their persistence and they flourish under all kind of unfavourable conditions, so I did not regard this sparrow attack as particularly serious.

He consumed several complete petals - five or six, I believe - and then decided he'd eaten his fill. He flew up to the spouting to begin his serenade of sparrow music, leaving me to ponder his behaviour.

A few moments of research revealed that this was not particularly unusual. After all, house sparrows are well-known for eating the petals of other flowers, such as the crocuses and primulas, especially yellow ones. In some cases, they will not eat the entire petal and this has given rise to accusations of wilful damage to these plants, but it does appear that the occasional consumption of fresh petals, either in whole or in part, is a necessary part of the house sparrow's diet. I wonder if that's what makes him chirp so loudly?

WITH rain aplenty during this summer, we have been blessed with the sight of some wonderful bridges of the gods. In fact, there have been several instances of double bridges, all rich with striking colours and high in the sky. Bridge of the gods is another name for a rainbow, probably dating from the ancient Norse, and I think it is a very apt title, even if it appears to honour pagan gods rather than our God.

Even in these days of enlightenment and advanced knowledge, there is magic and mystery in a rainbow and many of us love to perpetuate the old belief that there is a pot of gold awaiting discovery at the end of each one. And, as we know, when you move towards the groundward end of a rainbow, it always manages to keep a safe distance away, moving across the landscape as if from the brush of a giant artist.

The colours are those of the spectrum and, to help me memorise them in sequence, I was taught the phrase "Richard of York gains battles in vain", the initial letters of each word referring to a colour - hence red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. One some occasions, however, the colours are not particularly bright and prominent, and in some instances, they seem to merge into one another.

This was of importance to country people who tried to forecast the weather from the strength of the rainbow's colours. Rain was thought imminent if blue was the strongest, while if green dominated, then the rain would be continuous. Wind accompanied by rain was heralded by the strength of the red while a strong yellow indicated a spell of forthcoming fair weather. If a rainbow appeared to consist mainly of red and yellow, that was also regarded as a sign of approaching fair weather.

A rainbow is formed by the sun shining through falling rain, and examples of this can often be seen in waterfalls where the sun shines through the water to produce a mini-rainbow. Because the sun rises in the east, our English or Northern Hemisphere rainbows will always be in the west during the morning, and in the evening as the sun moves towards the west, any rainbows will then be in the east. Because the sun does not shine from the north, however, there will never be a rainbow in the south, although some may appear fairly close to the south at the height of summer.

It follows there is further weather lore which depends upon the position of a rainbow. A rainbow in the west (which must be during the morning) is the sign of an approaching rainstorm, while a rainbow in the east (only during the evening) means the rain is passing away. There is old ancient piece of lore which goes "A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd's warning while a rainbow at night is the shepherd's delight".

Some seafaring folks would refer to the rainbow as the dog, and so in coastal areas, that saying has been altered to read "A dog in the morning ..." etc. They would also refer to a small rainbow on the horizon as a sundog, and it was often believed that if a rainbow appeared over water but did not reach down to the surface, then fine weather could be expected.

There are suggestions that a rainbow can sometimes appear inside out, i.e. with the colours in the reverse order, but apparently this can occur during a double bow, with the inner bow's colours being reflected in the reverse order.

FOLLOWING my notes about pine martens, polecats and their ilk, I have received a fascinating letter from a reader in Guisborough.

He believes that Sir Alfred Pease, in his Dictionary of the North Riding Dialect, was rather confused about sweet marts and beech martens, probably through relying too heavily upon the work of Canon J C Atkinson in his Cleveland Dictionary. My correspondent affirms that it is the pine marten which is known as the sweet mart, and that Sir Alfred is mistaken when he refers to it as a beech marten. He does so under the entry for fou'mart, fummart, foomart, foomat, fullmor. These are dialect names for the polecat.

My correspondent understands that a beech marten, otherwise known as the stone marten or house marten, is not the same creature as a pine marten, but is a native of mainland Europe. It was not present in this country when we became an island many thousands of years ago.

In his travels overseas, Sir Alfred Pease might have come across beech martens because they were regarded as noise pests in urban areas, and were therefore destroyed.

My correspondent makes good use of dialect terms in his correspondence about these animals, referring to the polecat as a fummart, a term his grandfather used, and calling weasels and stoats by their dialect names of rezzils and clubsthas, or clubsters. He adds that a coloured ferret was called a fitchet, but wonders if there is a dialect name for an albino ferret. If there is, I have not come across it.

It seems that although fummarts (polecats) were exterminated by gamekeepers, they are now making a modest comeback, re-colonising parts of England, having survived in Wales. Evidence of their existence has been obtained in the Midlands as well as Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. A road casualty at Staindrop was probably a descendant of one released in Grizedale Forest, Cumbria.

My correspondent has seen a dead fummart in Staffordshire but looks forward to them living once again in our area, particularly as they drive away the troublesome mink.

I like his description of the lifestyle of polecats - although known as poultry cats in France, they feed chiefly on rabbits and often live in rabbit burrows. A sort of bed and breakfast arrangement, as my correspondent describes it!

I thank him for his interesting and entertaining letter