SOAKED sultanas may well be the ideal food for robins (Letters, January 9), but persuading the resident robin to recognise this is not easy.

Confronted with a trail of such plump fruit, laid across the windowsill instead of the customary sunflower seeds, it completely ignored them. It scavenged scraps of peanuts dropped by the blue tits under the hanging bird feeder, before making an unsuccessful attempt to land on the feeder perch.

Then it worked off its annoyance by flying in low-level pursuit of the dunnock around the herbaceous border.

Edgar Newton,

Melbourne Street, York.

Updated: 10:22 Thursday, January 31, 2002