On one of the last visits to my dad, he was enjoying watching the birds that were feeding off the seeds that he and my step-mother had laid out for them in the bird feeder.

Miss Hap seemed quite enchanted by it as well so we decided to buy one when we got back. We hung it on a special pole with a water bath and little table type thing on it, and waited for the birds to come.

Over the last couple of years we have some regular visitors of starlings, a little robin and our favourite, Mr Tubbs, who occasionally brings his wife with him for dinner (I am not quite sure what he is, but he is quite chunky).

Our little dog Roxy, used to like to go out and bark at them to scare them off but has since given up on that, as she knows she has no hope of catching them. What she does instead is to wait for them to drop bits on the ground (Mr Grump quite often puts out large chunks of bread that has gone stale) and gobble them up.

We have a few trees to the back and side of us, and when we looked out one day, we found that we had an unexpected visitor. He fancied a bit of lunch and liked what we had on offer, so he settled himself down at the table to tuck in!