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Our feathered friends

I HAVE the honour of being the chair of the Hreod Burna Urban Forest, a small charity that has the lease on five hectares of land, partly scrub woodland and partly grass areas that we are in the process of planting with trees.

We are in the Pinehurst/Gorse Hill area in the middle of Swindon. Our objectives are to improve the health and wellbeing of local people by providing woodland in which to exercise and engage with nature. It is also an objective to encourage wildlife by providing suitable habitats.

I thought you might be interested in some of the birds that visit HBUF:

Carrion crows, jackdaws, magpies and occasional jays.

Tits - great, blue and long tailed.

Goldfinch, chaffinch and bullfinch.

Herring gulls and black headed gulls visit our grass areas daily.

Robins, sparrows, dunnocks and wrens, thrushes and tree creepers.

Buzzards, kestrels, peregrine and red kite (flying overhead) and red kite.

Greater spotted and green woodpecker.

Little egrets and kingfishers occasionally feed in our brook and we have a pair of mallards on our little pond.

Wood pigeon

Starlings

Two separate sightings of a woodcock

A doubtful sighting of a curlew

And yesterday a goldcrest.

There are others that I have glimpsed or heard and not being an ornithologist have been unable to identify.

We would certainly like to see more bird watchers visit our woods.

STEVE THOMPSON

Norman Road

Swindon

Labour lacks ideas

THE letter of Peter Smith (Mar 9) criticises me for wanting to encourage wealth creation.

Manufacturing investment is the main way that wealth is created and this requires making good quality products and keeping up with the changes in consumer tastes and fashions.

Britain has a huge trade deficit because EU membership has been eroding our industrial base ever since we joined in 1973.

If we want money to pay for the public services then we must go back to an economy that makes quality goods for export.

Almost every day the Labour Party comes up with new ways to spend our money. Spending money is easy.

I have been following politics all my life and I am yet to hear any ideas from the Labour Party about ways to create wealth in Britain.

STEVE HALDEN

Beaufort Green, Swindon

Remember to laugh

WE are always on about being forgetful, but I saw a wonderful thing in a shop at Cirencester today. It was in a computer shop and the assistant said, “Can I help?”

I said, “Actually, I’m just browsing”. He said, “Oh the memory sticks.”

I said, "What a great idea, if every pensioner who couldn’t remember things so well, was allocated a ‘memory stick’, think of the money the NHS would save!”

I received a blank stare. Now I don’t know if his sense of humour was alien to my own. Anyway he went back to stabbing himself in the eye with a paper clip.

We all need a sense of humour these days but I wonder at times if mine is a little too subtle.

CHRIS GLEED

Proud Close, Purton