[John]

I don't know if you have the stamina to read this near 6,000 word story I wrote a few years ago but I hope you do. If so I would love to hear your critique of it.

I am not a writer but such was the impact of a bird that had arrived out of nowhere on the Scilly Isles on 7th October 1999 that I felt I had to write something about it. The result was a part fact, part fiction story written in a diary format. The factual part is regarding me and what was I doing and what was going on around me. The fictional part was regarding the actual bird and what he was doing and thinking through his eyes.

The bird in question was a magnificent Short toed Eagle, a first for Britain. I have seen hundreds of these abroad but the spectacle of such a magnificent bird arriving here on our shores really made an impact on me.

I have entitled the story Hedden, as that is the name I have given the bird.

Such is the size of the document that I have had to zip it up so I hope you all have the facility to unzip it and give it a try.

This was my very first attempt to writing anything and actually inspired me to write a few other fiction and non-fiction stories after that.

I hope you do read it and more to the point I hope you enjoy it.

Feel free to pull it to pieces if you want. If your critiscm is well founded it might help to actually make the story more readable.

BTW it is a zipped Word document. I opened it up and saved to disc which placed it onto my desktop but If you find you can't open it let me know and I suppose the next best thing is to copy and paste it bit by bit as a thread.

John