Bohemian Chatterers...

I never expected to see rare birds in Todmorden, but last week I saw a guy with a camera and long lens trained on the trees surrounding the car-park in the middle of town. They were waxwings (though, from a distance, on a gloomy day, they could have been starlings). It’s an 'invasion year’ for waxwings, apparently. Some birds ventured closer, to trees laden with yellow berries, and, when the sun came out, they looked exotic: more like parrots than starlings.

I haven’t seen this many waxwings (I counted around thirty) since I was in short trousers. I read about a flock of waxwings stripping the red cotoneaster berries from trees in Golden Acre Park (though the Yorkshire Post journo had tried to ‘sex up’ his account by calling them ‘Bohemian Chatterers’). I got on my bike and peddled to the park, to find the flock of waxwings still in residence. They weren’t bothered by a young lad with a monocular (and they weren’t bothered by an old guy with a monocular, in Tod). Two special moments, half a century apart…