Chaffinch

 I was standing talking to BiL in his back garden recently when a bird started shouting loudly from one of the shrubs. It flew out so I could see it was a chaffinch which made me realise how rarely they are seen now. I've never seen any on the feeders here. BiL's garden backs onto fields and although he only feeds birds with sunflower seed hearts he gets more variety on the feeder than I do here.

In the book 'An Illustrated Country Year' by Celia Lewis it says they are common and they are common in many parts of the country. I remember them hopping around the table when we were having coffee and cake outside at a café in Cornwall or Devon many years ago, like sparrows would have done in Suffolk, now sparrows and chaffinches are both harder to spot .

Then by a weird coincidence at Bank Holiday Sunday's car-boot sale I spotted this and picked it up to look at the base and yes it was another Beswick bird, question was, was the lady selling a dealer and would want a few £ or just someone clearing out? So I asked how much and when she said 50p it had to be bought!

Oh dear, I did say there would be no more but I now have 3 Beswick birds, that's almost a collection. The Wren and Blue tit will come out of the box for spring and the Chaffinch will be for Summer, that way they won't be dust collectors and I won't get fed up with them.

June on the bookshelf looks like this..........

The piece of Poole pottery shaped like a buoy (it's a small bell) was found in a Charity shop in Ipswich in 2022 , it hasn't been out on display before because it got wrapped up and tucked in a corner of the box that I keep all the bits in and kept getting missed . I had a sort out a few weeks ago and found it. About time it was out of the box!

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