Our goldfinches seem perfectly happy with plain old sunflower seed hearts, from an ordinary feeder. We get more than a dozen sometimes, taking turns. They share it with sparrows, robins, greenfinch, blackbirds and, unfortunately, the occasional squirrel.

I was a schoolboy in Washington DC in the 1950s when the Salk polio vaccine first appeared. Desperate mothers queued to get their children protected. Everyone knew of someone paralysed or dead from this terrible disease.
And we were recently so close to global eradication.

I saw the writing on the wall and left when he changed the name. My blog post at the time: jarwillis.com/2023/08/05/x...

Bloody cheek !

This captures the kind of things I was so worried about towards the end of my career.

Huge respect for what you do. A great friend was GP on the Isles of Scilly - not quite as remote, but huge responsibility deciding when it was necessary to evacuate acutely ill patients.

Thank you for these wonderful insights into your life. My visits in rural Hampshire were on a very much smaller scale, but often beautiful too. The only trouble was that you were constantly under pressure. (20 years ago now for me but I quess it's the same for you.)