Based on experience gained over previous seasons I always predict that winter will begin to bite in the second week of November.

However, this year we had our first frosts, fog and briefly plummeting temperatures in the first week of this month.

Fortunately, courtesy of the clean air act of the nineteen-sixties, we have not endured thick fog, known as 'smog', which was a combination of smoke and fog, also called 'pea-soupers', for many years.

Leaves have remained on trees for much longer than usual this autumn but any frosts will soon whisk away any that remain, assisted by a strengthening breeze.

It was interesting to see that on Remembrance Sunday, trees lining Whitehall were still in full leaf compared with thirty years ago when they would have been bare, so climate change is certainly having an effect.

In last week's article I mentioned my concern about the disappearance of my garden robin (pictured).

Then during a visit to RHS Wisley on a beautiful sunny day in the first week in November, there were many robins throughout the gardens.

None were singing but most were uttering their 'tick-tick' contact calls so they were probably not all resident robins but migrants, because many fly into Britain from Northern Europe from August through to November and remain with us all winter.