Tuneful finches provide interest during long wait in car park

ATTENDING a clinic appointment in Plymouth yesterday I arrived early, as I tend to do with such things, reckoning that it is always less stressful to kill time at your destination than to twiddle your thumbs at home ahead of a precisely-calculated moment of departure, only to have your best laid plans sabotaged by traffic tailbacks.

The roads from Dartmoor to Devonport were as clear as one might expect during lockdown and I arrived with plenty of time to kill. Three-quarters of an hour, I’m embarrassed to say.

I could have sat in my car, listening to the radio or staring at my mobile phone, but did what I always do in such situations: get out, stretch the legs, enjoy some fresh air and look around me.

Radio 3 had been playing tunes with a spring bird song theme, but rather than piccolos, whistles, violins and flutes, I got to hear the real thing – and one species that I seldom come across where I live.

From the health centre car park, looking over the Brickfields stadium and neighbouring athletics track, I spotted a gang of magpies (seven – though perhaps that should be a secret according to the rhyme), a few herring gulls drifting lazily overhead and plenty of woodpigeons (if one had to place money on the next bird to fly past at any inland setting I would generally bet on it being a woodpigeon).

But it was a pleasant canary-like twittering sound that really caught my attention, interspersed with an occasional drawn-out wheezing note.

Greenfinches. Four of them were perched in a tree in the car park.

They were silhouetted against the sky, so no chance to see their colour, but lovely to hear. An unexpected treat, and one I would never have enjoyed if I had remained in my car – or arrived on time.