Peter Rhodes on health foods for swans, more perils of Twitter and surgeons who can't stitch

THE north wind doth blow and in our local park the swans, ducks and geese are forming big, bold mobs, following humans in hope of food. And by "food," they mean bread, currant buns and old but well-buttered crumpets. They probably know that it's not exactly health food but when you've been sitting all night with your backside in a freezing pond, you crave sweet and fatty stuff.

AND then the nanny state strikes. In the finest tradition of Homo sapiens knows best, a canal trust in Gloucester is advising people not to feed the birds with stodgy stuff. A spokesman declares: "Leftover greens including kale, cabbage and lettuce are great alternatives." Try explaining that to a big, hungry cob as you offer him a slice of cold cabbage. If nothing else, you might discover the truth about that urban myth that says a swan can break a man's arm.

A PROFESSOR of surgery, Roger Kneebone (seriously) says some students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching patients. He says some medical students might have high academic grades but cannot cut or sew.

THIS rang a bell. In his excellent documentary about rebuilding a Supermarine Spitfire, that national treasure Guy Martin described the incredible complexity of the aircraft's wings, designed in the 1930s. They proved a real challenge for modern craftsmen who, as he put it, don't have the right skill sets. Yet the Spitfires, Hurricanes and other war-winning aircraft were assembled not only by highly trained engineers but by women like my mother-in-law. These war workers were shop girls, embroiderers and seamstresses who had been raised on knitting, darning and crochet and endless childhood games of cat's cradle and hopscotch. That generation had grace, dexterity and mental alertness and were good with their hands because that's the way life was. Take away the need for intricate work and a sort of high-speed evolution takes over and old skills vanish from our species. Don't expect someone whose only hand exercise is a smartphone to give you a neat appendix scar.

ANOTHER peril of smartphone obsession and social-media addiction is that people come to regard what they call MSM (mainstream media) with contempt. And yet MSM (you're reading it now) is still the most potent and potentially damaging of all media. You can survive a scandal on Snapchat, but heaven help you if it reaches the tabloids. I have always advised folk never to commit to social media anything they would not yell from a rooftops. Additionally, look at what you've just written and ask yourself: "How's this going to look in the Daily Mail?"

FOR example, I know an academic who recently decided to let his students and followers know how much he was paid. He chose to use Twitter (see yelling from rooftops, above). So now the whole world knows he gets £42,000 a year, which is probably not what he wanted.