Many people put seed out for garden birds, and many more realise how long the winter is.
However, it's a lot longer if you're a bird weighing 22 grams and have to eat a third of your body weight every day. Eating enough to stave off the winter cold is fundamental. Imagine then, as a small bird amongst a flock of finches, what a welcome sight a stubble field must make when winging in on a late January afternoon. It would resemble, to all intents and purposes, a giant bird-table, a field full of precious food. Walking though these fields, it's hard to see how they could benefit anything, let alone provide a passport for so many birds into the new year.