I was reading the other day that the Cornish chough had mysteriously returned to the county.

Five birds have been spotted on the coast and somebody recognised them. Which is surprising in itself because they haven't been seen since the fifties and few people would recognise a chough if it sat on them.

Even another chough would have difficulty because there are apparently not a lot left.

For those of you who don't know, the chough is Cornwall's 'national' bird, and here's one little mystery. Who actually chooses the national bird?

Who for that matter chooses anything national?

I mean who chose the leek to be the national emblem of Wales? Everyone grows leeks.

We could all claim an affinity to leeks and besides its a silly vegetable to choose if people have to wear it. If you have to have a national vegetable then I would have thought a runner bean or a stick of asparagus would fit much more neatly through a buttonhole. Leeks are unwieldy, tend to be smelly and hardly represent a nation of great poets and singers.

Other national things tend to be chosen at random. Sometimes there is a glut of them. Canada has maple leaves, lots of them, so their emblem is a leaf. America has a golden eagle, it had lots of them but since the poor bird was chosen to represent this great nation its numbers have declined alarmingly. It probably rues the day it ever posed for the photographs.

Nevertheless it hasn't totally deserted its home country, although it tends to stick to high pointy peaks in desolate areas where nobody can nick its eggs or carry its babies off to some private zoo.

I've heard that the chough, which is pronounced chuff, possibly part of its problem because maybe people have been going around for decades asking if anyone has seen a chowg lately and getting a negative reply, has some connection with King Arthur. But then what doesn't.

There were, at one time, a lot of them and they lived on the coast. Which was bad news for inland Cornish folk who probably never saw one anyway. People told them the chough was their national bird and they had to take people's word for it. They probably spent fruitless years looking for a blackbird with red legs, never ever seeing one.

I'm told that choughs disappeared because their habitats disappeared. So for many a year we've had a national bird which had packed its bags and disappeared off to the South of France just because of a few problems like missing cliffs. In other words when the going got tough the chough got going.

Now it's back and I ask you 'Do we really want a national bird which, willy nilly, without a word to anyone, decides to desert our fair shores for fifty years and never so much a postcard?

Why couldn't it have adapted, like foxes, who find rifling round dustbins in towns much more reliable than sitting in a freezing lair expecting a pack of hounds to start baying outside at any minute.

All they have to worry about now is getting food poisoning from a slightly mildewed four cheese pizza.

We've got nice cliffs, plenty of shoreline, lots of discarded chips and takeaway Chinese to eat. We have gardens full of bird boxes and little nets full of nuts. What's the matter with you bird? Aren't we good enough?

I could add that there are lots of perfectly nice birds ready to apply for the vacancy in the national bird of Cornwall stakes. Respectable sparrows, handsome thrushes, very active finches of all hues and a good number of blackbirds with orange legs who could pass muster in a bad light.

Come to think of it, what about seagulls? There are plenty of them, they don't mind dustbins, prefer them in fact.

They don't stick to just one part of Cornwall but are gradually moving inland.

Some apparently have never seen the sea and wonder what all that blue wet stuff is should they venture near it.

Appoint them as the national bird and we'd never have to worry again. And at least you could tell people who had been unfortunate enough to receive a dollop of blackberry coloured seagull poop down the back of their best shirt that they'd been honoured by the national bird of Cornwall

So Mr Chough, it could be crunch time. You have arrived back like an errant husband who went out for a packet of ciggies 50 years ago and never returned. The welcome mat may be missing.

I'll stop now and sit back, and wait for the letters!