During a visit to most garden centre open air cafes we are often joined and entertained by a few chaffinches.

Used to people and very tame,they readily alight on tables or hop about on the ground beneath picking up crumbs dropped from our muffins and cupcakes.

At one cafe there is a male chaffinch with deformed feet that I call 'stumpy'(pictured)but he has been around for three years so clearly his disability does not affect him.

The male sports beautiful plumage with shiny slate-blue crown and neck,chestnut back and black and white wing bars while females lack the bright colours.Th song of the male is unmistakable and likened to the run up and delivery of a bowler at a cricket match.

I've enjoyed the songs of the same two local chaffinches for the past three years.Although songs of the birds are basically the same there are always subtle variations especially on the final notes so each bird can be recognised.

Happily the chaffinch is one of the few birds to enjoy a considerable population increase over the past decade.By contrast, the same cannot be said about the swift as numbers are declining.

This summer my local swifts are fewer in number and compared with ten years ago fewer still.I always like to watch them at dusk on a fine summer's evening as they mop up any remaining aerial plankton before joining together in a small flock,forming a tight upward spiralling vortex,always in the same place,their cries becoming fainter and fainter as they drift up into the darkening sky to roost on high.