Long-tailed tit

Last time I was at my sister's, she was unpacking the unsold paintings from her latest exhibition. (Not her alone, other local artists as well.) "I can't understand why nobody wanted this one," she said, showing me a delightful watercolour of three long-tailed tits, priced at only £20.

"If you'd been charging £50, you'd probably have sold it," I told her. "Sometimes, if things are priced too cheaply, people think they're not much good. Anyway, it's lovely and I'll buy it." Being my generous younger sister, she insisted I had it for nothing, and so I took it home and hung it in my bedroom.

The more I gazed at it, the more I wondered why she had put so much pink on them. Long-tailed tits aren't chaffinch-coloured, surely, I thought. Well, just now I was in the garden and there on a tree in next door's garden was a long-tailed tit, preening its feathers. I spoke to it, like you do if you're a daft nature-lover like me, and blow me down if it didn't fly to the cable three feet above my head that conducts power to my partner's workshop and sit there, letting me take a good look at it. And yes, its belly feathers had a lot of pink amongst the buff. My sister had got it right. Maybe next time I can persuade the local sparrowhawk to perch obligingly above my head. I'd love to take a close look at that! The nearest I've got to it is witnessing the blurr as it whizzes across the garden in hot pursuit of... no, please, not long-tailed tit!