GOLDFINCH
I used to see Yellowhammers all the time back then. I can’t remember the last time I saw one. YOUNG BIRDERS I watched them hatch and fledge. But not the Robins, even though they should have gone first. The Robin’s nest was ransacked, the chicks – almost ready to fly – taken. I can still remember how that felt. My dad reckoned it was a Stoat or a Weasel. They probably had young to feed, too, he reasoned. It didn’t make it any better. It left me for a while, this hereditary love of birds, as music and girls and going out came in and took their place, but it returned when I had my own children. Birds, like Christmas, holidays and big football
We stumbled upon a Jay ripping open a Wren’s nest. He’d seen a Jay before - but not this close, and not this ferocious. It was a sight to behold
tournaments, are always more fun when you have children of your own to share them with. We’re surrounded by old woods and hilly fields where we live. It’s not great when it snows – this part of rural north-west Leicestershire seems to exist in its own microclimate – but when the clocks go forward and everything wakes up for spring, it’s glorious. Come on, I’m always saying to him. Let’s go for a walk. Not just because it gets him off his Playstation or that he opens up and tells me about school, the cricket team, his friends, etc, when we go for a walk. But it’s a chance to be out with him, to pass it on, that love of birds which my dad gave to me and his dad gave to him. That’s the idea. The reality is different, because he doesn’t really want to know. We had a pair of Goldfinches nesting in an old fir tree in our back garden two years ago. They were the finest thing in our garden, flitting around, feeding on the seeds of my wife’s lovingly-tended plants, a flash of gold and red and honeycomb brown. You can start birdwatching at any age. You just need to be inspired and interested Even without ‘gore’ it is an exciting bird Even a garden nesting pair couldn’t capture Lee’s son’s imagination