AEOLIAN.CO.UK - Events - A bird down the chimney

I walked into the front room of our house, switched on the TV and sat down. A strange scratching noise coming from the gas fire made me jump. At first I thought it might be the wind, but when it happened again I switched off the TV and listened.. yes, there was definitely something behind the fire!

I called Brian into the room, he heard the noise too. At this point it started flapping wildly, probably disturbed by the sound of our voices. Well, it was definitely a bird of some sort.. now how on earth do we rescue it?! Looking under the fire we could see a pile of debris that had been pushed out of the chimney breast by the bird. We wondered what else could be stuck at the bottom of the chimney - dead or alive!

I telephoned the council first- not much help as it was a Saturday and their offices were closed. Next stop was the British Gas helpline, who as soon as I said "We've got a bird down our chimney", said "Oh, no problem, we will send a Transco engineer out within two hours". They assured me that it was a free service, as it was possible that the bird could cause damage to the gas supply.

And sure enough, at 1.30pm, Kevin the engineer arrived. Apparently they get this sort of thing quite a lot.

A few seconds after this photograph was taken, the bird flew out of the ventilation hole! It didn't seem at all injured, but was squawking wildly as Brian was trying to catch it!

Once it had been caught it was very placid, not trying to struggle at all. It was a young starling, and when released in the garden it flew away into the distance, no doubt very relieved to be out of the pitch black chimney breast! Meanwhile we were left with a hole where the fire used to be.

What British Gas didn't tell us on the phone, is that Transco can disconnect any gas appliances if required, but for "safety" reasons they are not allowed to reconnect the equipment. We would have to call out a British Gas engineer who would charge around £80!

Needless to say, we didn't have the gas fire reconnected and now have a nice vase of dried flowers hiding the gaping hole.

A bird down the chimney

... is worth a photo or two!