What Kati did next; Transfixed by our feathered friends

THE other week the three of us sat staring out of the back window into the garden for an hour. We had a pen and paper to hand and we ticked a box everytime we saw a bird. It was for the RSPB birdwatch campaign.

Every year over the same weekend they ask us to watch our garden for a random hour and write down the birds we see so they have a record of the goings on in the bird world.
We have spent the last three years feeding and encouraging, goading and cajoling these birds into our garden.

Last year we had flocks of siskins and goldfinches, a broody pair of doves and a flock of starlings that screeched and flapped around the feeders, blackbirds that fed on the apples and a bullfinch that occasionally landed on our fence.

We also had a sparrowhawk, some nuthatches, a mistlethrush or two and a fieldfare.

I tell you we had the lot. Except on this specific day at this specific hour in this specific year.

I was looking for the box I could tick that said “Yes, we do spend an absolute blinking fortune on the birds in our garden and when we desperately need them too they can’t be bothered to turn up.”

I wanted to let the ornithologists at the RSPB know how much time, energy and money we spend on our feathered friends.

I wanted them to know how much we care. I wanted them to know that when they run out of their sunflower seeds they are given mine, the expensive ones, from the health food shop.

We had stuck to our side of the bargain, why couldn’t the birds?

I was pondering this question earlier as I stood staring out of the kitchen window, cursing the day we ever invited them into the garden, when suddenly there was a flurry of activity.
The bullfinch stopped by, the woodpecker from the park nipped in, the thrushes and finches and tits all arrived. It was beautiful. I stood there mesmerised.

The little one ran in with his cuddly monkey dragging behind. I picked him up and we stood transfixed for 10 minutes while the birds chattered and swooped, pecked and squawked.

Monkey was put to one side as we stood there entranced.

I realised we were lucky to have them there at all regardless of their timekeeping abilities.