Getting twitchy in the bedroom
Leeds choir in BBC final Inquiry for bin fire RARE STARLING SPOTTED IN BILLINGHAM GARDEN
A GROUP of Leeds music students have become the first group to reach the final of new BBC singing talent show Pitch Battle.
Leeds Contemporary Singers – made up of second and third year music students and their lecturer Craig – beat Liverpool based The LMA Choir in the final battle of Saturday night’s show.
After four other choirs were eliminated in a series of rounds, the remaining two groups took it in turns to perform guest judge Will Young’s Evergreen before the former Pop Idol singer joined Leeds Contemporary Singers, indicating they had won the episode.
Young said: “It was so hard to choose a winner but I am really thrilled. A FIRE started in the early hours of yesterday in Blyth’s Ridley Park is now being investigated by police.
Firefighters were called to the park after an industrial bin was set ablaze outside the bowling green pavilion.
A spokeswoman from Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service said: “We were called at 2.15am and a crew from West Hartford attended.
“There was an industrialsized bin on fire and they used one hose. It was extinguished by 3.15am.”
Northumbria Police added that they have been made aware of the incident by the fire service and that they were investigating.
Anyone with information about the fire is asked to contact Northumbria Police on 101. IT’S not often you let six strangers with cameras into your bedroom but last weekend a North couple made an exception.
The men were all twitchers – or birdwatchers – who had been alerted to a rare find in the garden of Brian and Rachael Iddon.
Brian, 42, said: “We were decorating my eldest’s bedroom and noticed out of the window some guys walking up and down the street with big cameras.
“They were looking down the alleyways between the houses, obviously trying to find something, so Rachael went out to ask them what.
“While she did I went into the back bedroom and looked at the cherry tree at the bottom of the garden and saw what I thought was a baby magpie.
“It’s colouring was a bit unusual and I took a picture.”
When he showed it to the twitchers they said it wasn’t a magpie, but a rosecoloured starling.
It is not a common sight in the region, it’s habitat is Eastern Europe.
Brian said: “It must have been blown way off course, probably because of the wind. Apparently it’s been five years since one had been seen around here so it was quite a big deal.”
So big a deal that many more twitchers began stalking the streets of Billingham.
“More and more people starting turn up,” said Brian.
“It got a bit strange because at one point we had six men with long lenses standing in our bedroom. But they were all very nice.
“We just let them in. They were also in our neighbour’s gardens.”
Pictures of the rose-coloured starling have appeared on bird sites across the country with thank you messages to Brian and Rachael for their hospitality.
“They publish their thanks on Twitter which, from twitchers, made Rachael smile,” said Brian.
As for the starling, it has taken to life in Billingham for the moment. “It seems very happy in the cherry tree.”
A spokesperson for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said that rose-coloured starlings breed in Eastern Europe and migrate to India or Sri Lanka in the winter.
As the adult birds have very attractive pink feathers, they are noticeably very different from the native starlings we see in our gardens.
The RSPB spokesperson said: “In most years we will get small numbers of rose-coloured starlings appearing around the UK, as they overshoot their usual range.
“As well as the bird in Billingham, there has also been another one seen in Stanhope in Durham this week, and there have been sightings in Glamorgan, Argyll, Suffolk, Kent, Devon, Berks, West Sussex and Dorset this year.” BRIAN IDDON