At last, the birds have taken a fancy to us

WHAT KATI DID NEXT: When we moved into this house, a few years ago, one of the most important things for us both was an outside space.

We had lived in terrace houses for a long time, and we were both desperate for a bit of green to call our own.

As you may remember we built a vegetable patch that although needs work, this year we will hopefully have potatoes, courgettes, green beans, tomatoes and fingers crossed some raspberries and strawberries.

Then we decided to invest, because trust me it’s expensive, in some garden furniture to make ourselves a little more comfortable out there.

However before all of this happened we bought bird feeders.

As a family we love birds, husband loves them all, yes I do mean them ones as well, but now he’s getting on, the feathered kind are much more appreciative of him.

It was very important to us all that we encouraged birds into the garden, so we had and still have feeders of all shapes and sizes, for all different kinds of birds, and even ones that keep away the squirrels, although we do have a bird table which the squirrels have taken for their own. Very early on in our bird encouragement experiment we put up about three bird boxes.

We were in this for the long haul, we wanted grandma birds and mummy birds and we definitely wanted the baby ones.

So we nailed up these bird boxes and put about the garden all they would need to make a comfy home, little twigs, bits of cotton wool, feathers from an old pillow.

Four years on and nothing.

Oh they had put their noses in and had a shifty about, but it seemed even birds could be a little bit picky, maybe we should have re-painted?

Or even upped the price? That would have confused them.

This morning however, I was in bed, my one lie-in of the week and it was very rudely interrupted by husband summoning me to the binoculars.

In and out they had been going for hours.

Twigs were going in, cotton wool was going in, feathers were going in and two blue tits had been going in and out.

Spring had sprung early in our garden. It only took them four years.