Celebrity birders - including Chris Packham, Felicity Kendal and Alan Titchmarsh - name their favourite birds

                                     

Sparrowhawk - 'exquisite little terminator' according to Chris Packham

CELEBRITY naturalist Chris Packham has revealed his favourite bird.

In a feature compiled by Ria Higgins for a New Year edition of The Daily Telegraph, he singled out the Sparrowhawk.

 "A whish, a whoosh… and gone," he says. " In all my life I will never see enough of these exquisite little terminators."

In the same article, Felicity Kendal, who famously starred in the BBC-TV sitcom, The Good Life, plumps for the Jay - not least because they have begun visiting her patio garden in Chelsea.

"I’d never seen these stunning birds before,"she enthuses. "It was magical. Birds are gifts. To see them is something that money can’t buy."

Meanwhile, Deborah Meaden of the BBC TV show, The Dragons'  Den, plumps for the Snipe, Alan Titchmarsh for the Robin and broadcaster Kate Humble for the Bewick's Swan, a species which, in winter,  she sees  alongside  the Seven Estuary near where she lives.

Says she: "Smaller than our resident Mute Swans and lacking their air of haughty superiority, they have the appearance of a sweetly elegant Jane Austen heroine."                                  

Robin - 'the gardener's friend'

Jay - 'to see them is something money can't buy'