A BMW owner was gobsmacked when he lifted up the bonnet of his car to find a birds' nest with eggs inside. David Collinson, from Kings Clipstone near Mansfield , has now decided to nurture the mother and her babies himself. Mr Collinson: "It's so pretty, so beautiful.
I've never seen one like it. I've shown everybody in the pub and that. They all say they love to see it.
" The 77-year-old had first noticed activity around the front of his motor when he had got into his car to go to ASDA and reversed back out of his driveway. He says he saw a small bird perched between his windscreen wipers and his engine. The tiny bird, the size of a jenny wren, then darted underneath the engine.
Mr Collinson said: "I thought: that's a strange place for a bird to go." It was only the next day that the retired grandad opened up his bonnet to find the nest. It's made out of what Mr Collinson believes is soft fern that the mother bird has obtained from a river.
The next day, car enthusiast Mr Collinson decided to research what sort of bird he'd seen. He concluded it was a coal tit or a titmouse, with a crest and a tail, a black and white body and a "mushroom flash" under either wing He said: "I thought: Christ, I've never seen one of them before." In the proceeding week, two of the eggs hatched.
The birds, initially tiny "skeletons", can be seen calling for food in a video filmed by Mr Collinson's granddaughter. When the bonnet was next checked, the youngsters had started to develop feathers. The.
