Ticks

It was a very serendipitous moment.

A morning's work was cancelled when I arrived on site to find no-one around and the building securely locked. Several phone calls later, with the work re-arranged for another day, I headed home much earlier than expected. As I wandered into the lounge, ruminating about how I was going to plan the rest of the day, I happened to glance out of the window into the garden.

A bird flew up from beneath the seed feeder and disappeared into an Alder tree. I didn't know what it was, but I did know that it was a species I hadn't ever seen before. Without taking my eyes off the spot where the bird had vanished, I called for reinforcements, preferably armed with binoculars. By the time another set of eyes was trained on the Alder tree, I could breathe out and upgrade my "I don't know what" to an "I have an inkling."

My garbled description was along the lines of bigger than a House Sparrow, smaller than a Blackbird, a blur of brown as it flew away and with a weird splash of white at the end of its tail.

I didn't dare say any more for fear of tempting fate, but this would be a year tick, a garden tick, a patch tick, a county tick and a life tick. And the same for my partner. No pressure, little bundle of feathers, but make our dreams come true, please!

After a few moments (oh, it seemed so much longer than that), the bird re-appeared, dropping back down onto the lawn and foraging for seeds discarded by the untidy Starlings and Greenfinches above.

Yes, it very was! Looking a little like an Identikit bird put together by some very unreliable witnesses, or perhaps a cartoon bird drawn by someone who had just binge watched several series of The Muppets, there, in the garden was a Hawfinch.

There was probably a light dusting of excited profanity as we gawped at the improbable happening right in front of our eyes.  It hung around for most of the afternoon, but wasn't here the next day.

Sadly, our windows are not very clean at the moment  (who am I kidding, they're never clean - sorry Mark!), so our photos do not do justice to such a cracking bird.

Hawfinch - look at the beak on that!