Charmed - or otherwise

Amazing! Two days ago we had a couple of goldfinches in our garden at breakfast-time. Our good friends, Mandy and Charles, had given us a bird-feeder with a bag of Nyga seed 'for goldfinches, redpolls and siskins only'. They'd put one up in their garden at the other end of Grove, and eventually, after about a year, goldfinches had found it. Ours had been up just over a week, and bim, bam, boom! there they were. The mystery is, how did they find it? We've not seen them sniffing around before. How do they distinguish between THEIR seed and the common-or-garden seed or peanuts in the other feeders? Do they smell it? Or see it? After all it's not sitting there on top of thistle plants. Well, we're just glad to see them, a bit of colour to cheer up this grey mornings.

But what about this godwit bird? I mean Sir Fred Godwit, who wades in the lucrative mudflats of the City and then takes flight loaded with more worms than he can possibly eat. I don't wish him ill. After all, I understand he's by no means exceptional in that part of the world. There are plenty of other waders where he comes from. However I DO hope he uses his money well. Some people seem to think he could pay off the national debt with it. I don't think so. But he could do a LOT OF GOOD with it. Here's an idea, Sir Fred. How about keeping enough to pay off your mortgage and live on? And then give the rest away to people who need it? Like the homeless, hospices, the hungry? You could do a lot of good, and I guarantee you'd be a happier man. Oh, and one other thing, don't tell people that you're doing it. That would spoil the whole thing. After all, as my friend Tom Greenwood used to say, 'There are no pockets in your last coat.'