Is Jeremy Corbyn the Lord Mayor’s hero?

J Moody (Letters, September 19) is absolutely spot-on in drawing attention to the sartorial difference between the Mayor of Malton and the Lord Mayor of York.

In the photograph of Cllr Paul Andrews, Mayor of Malton, he is impeccably turned-out.

A picture of the York Lord Mayor shows a man who can’t really be too bothered about dressing in the manner his office warrants: an open-necked “jazzy-looking” shirt appears to be OK.

Right beside him is the Lady Mayoress, who believes a biker jacket, striped shirt and blue jeans is sufficiently smart for the Poppleton Community Railway Nursery’s 75th birthday celebration they were opening.

Luckily the Sheriff of York and the Sheriff’s Lady, have made the effort in dressing correctly in the dress code their positions warrant.

Could the Lord Mayor’s hero be Jeremy Corbyn?

After all, in his first PM’s Question Time as Leader of The Opposition, he appeared in a sports jacket sans tie.

Jeremy Corbyn now appears at PM’s Question Time in a suit with tie.

So there’s sartorial hope yet for the Lord Mayor and his Lady if they follow the lead of Mr. Corbyn!

Philip Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge

Complex picture of birds’ decline

TJ Ward is the latest correspondent to ask about the apparently dwindling numbers of birds in the garden. In response I echo my reply earlier this year: “It’s complicated”.

The good reasons: birds go where the food is, and if spring/summer provides bountiful natural food sources, the birds are more likely to go for that rather than our garden feeders. Also, at this time of year birds are forming flocks and looking at migrating. This can create a temporary void as incoming migrants may not yet have arrived.

It’s easy to assume the goldfinch you see in May and the one you see in January are one and the same. But often our spring/summer birds head south and are replaced by migrants from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

So in that regard, numbers will certainly increase on feeders later in the year.

Now, the bad. In the same way that weather can make things good for birds, it can also make it bad. Low availability of suitable food, especially insect sources, can contribute to nest failures. Predation by cats, birds of prey, and magpies and crows has an effect.

The recent State of Nature report identified changing habitats as a major issue in the decline of a large number of species, with industrialisation of farming and our own overly-manicured gardens being a significant problem for breeding birds.

Finally, climate change is an ever-present factor. This however has more of a tendency to change the make-up of what we think of as ‘garden birds’. Remember, however, there were no gardens when those birds evolved, they have adapted to us.

David Craven, York

Thanks due to Wings Appeal collectors

I would like to say a huge thank you to the folk who collected for the Wings Appeal 2016 at Monks Cross shopping park, York on Saturday September 10 – it was a super result.

They were: Maureen M. Smith: £28.35 Maureen Barter: £61.13 Graeme Robertson: £102.56 Ian Smith: £114.87 Dick Gray: £169.44 Grand total: £476.35 It was fantastic – keep up the good work!

Maureen M Smith, Wings Appeal Organiser, RAFA York

Late starter who never caught up

MUCH talk about first day back at school as the long holidays ended.

On pre-school days I was asthmatic, bronchitic, emphatic and dogmatic.

It made me a late starter at school and consequently I probably never caught up.

I attended seven schools and only really liked two of them. Oh dear!

School uniforms are in the news again. They were not compulsory in my day. Now we have some parents who can’t even afford the uniform. Is that progress?

Max Nottingham, St Faith’s Street, Lincoln