Malfunctioning chaffinch

27 August 2005

Woohoo! Long weekend coming up. Even longer for me cos we’re going up to Suffolk to see Lee on his birthday on Tuesday. We’ve even bought him presents! Tomorrow Suzy will be here for food and gossip and Sam and John will also be returning from the land of flames and fire to show us their photos and to collect their car. Which reminds me, I must get it out of that ditch I drove it into.

We had a small happening yesterday in the shape of a small, malfunctioning chaffinch. Mum and Dad had first seen him in the gravel garden, not looking too bright and seemingly unperturbed by their close proximity. Then again, that is a trait with the birds in our garden; there was the collared dove that didn’t fly away until Dad had walked right up to it and poked it in the feathers. The chaffinch didn’t seem able to fly, his tail and wings seemed a bit wonky somehow. We gave him some seed from the bird feeder, but he seemed incapable of pecking it up, managing to only peck at the ground next to it. On the few occasions he managed to get a seed into his beak, it wasn’t long before he dropped it again.

Dad rang the RSPCA and they sent a couple of drivers to pick him up. The bird, not Dad. An oldish woman and an oldish man (who quite clearly couldn’t work out how old I was) duly turned up, put the bird in a box and carted him off to Folly Wildlife Rescue.