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Fieldfare

I came across a newspaper article recently by somebody commenting that in his childhood he only ever saw sparrows and starlings in the garden. My childhood recollections, on the edge of London, are much the same. We may have had the occasional robin and blackbird but I don't remember them. Certainly there was nothing exotic as a wood pigeon and I didn't see a magpie in the area until I was 17.

Now in my mother's garden pigeons and magpies are more likely to be seen than sparrows and starlings. Last weekend I saw a blue tit investigating the nest box and in a garden at the end of the street we saw a fieldfare. Quite a change over the last 50 years.

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