Foul fowl mystery One of the mysteries in Two Old Twitchers: A Cuckoo In The Nest came from a real-life story I investigated when I was a radio journalist and news editor. 

It began with a panicked phone call put through to my studio. "Is that Drew?"

The female voice was charged with a combination of emotions I couldn't quite place.

"Yes. Drew here. How can I help?"
"Something hideous has happened under the bridge. Dead bodies and blood are littered everywhere!"

Now, as a news editor, you tend to imagine all kinds of things when presented with that information. But I would never have expected what came next.

"Someone has poisoned all the chickens and I think it's the Council!"

Chicken bodies. Not humans. Ahh. A mystery most fowl.

I took down the details, including the name and contact for the caller, and went to investigate, when the phone rang again. A similar story, only in a different location. This time, the site was a car pull-off bay next to a park, about 15 minutes' drive from the first location. Then the phone went again. And again. And again. Caller after caller with similar stories. 

All the calls were consistent: In two locations, the bridge and the park, fowl had been found convulsing and in one place (the park) some of the birds had been bludgeoned and cut to death, with blood all over the place.


Who would do this and why?

I tried the Council. They didn't know about the blood bit, but they did commission a reputable contractor to remove the birds from those locations. People had been illegally dumping chickens, and other members of the community, notably older ones, had taken to feeding the birds regularly, treating the locations like public petting zoos. I requested the contractor's contact number and gave him a call.

The blood bit had nothing to do with him. That had him puzzled and after our conversation (and his explanation) he rushed out to the sites to see what was going on with the blood.

Then I had another call from a woman who told me she had preserved some evidence to take to the vet. She heard my story on the morning news and said she found a dead sparrow at one of the sites the previous night. She'd wrapped it and put it in the freezer so she could take to the vet as soon as they opened. That way, there'd be evidence of the poison in its body.

But there was a twist. She was the one that probably killed the bird. (Read on for details...)

Later, when working with Mik on Two Old Twitchers: A Cuckoo In The Nest, we used this incident as one of the first storylines woven through the book. I won't tell you the answer; that will spoil that part of the book, but we put all the clues you need to know in the second chapter. (You can read that bit free using the "look inside" preview feature on Amazon or by downloading the first three chapters from the Two Old Twitchers free excerpt page.) 

I thought the real mystery was how a person that loves birds could do this to them and why? I think you'll love the answer when you get to it later in the book. One of our favorite lines is the four word answer given by the perpetrator when he is finally discovered. Mik came up with the line and I still adore it.

As for the sparrow in the freezer, we used that in the book too. 

If you're a birder, you'll probably have already guessed the answer. If not, we have Tom explain and confirm later in the book.

As for the blood - I can tell you that bit: While the birds were 'convulsing' a bunch of drunken teens with nothing better to do smashed their bottles and used the broken glass to massacre the birds that couldn't get away. The police dealt with that, thankfully. We didn't use that part in the book.

I hope you enjoyed that glimpse behind one of the storylines, and feel free to ask us about any of the others you'd like to know about.
Drew