A VISITOR from the tropics made a flying visit to Winchcombe this week to create a puzzling mystery for one Cheltenham Road resident.

Mrs Frances Hunter was sitting at her home on Monday (September 18) lunchtime when she saw a tiny bird hovering near her Busy Lizzies. On closer inspection it turned out to be a humming bird, but she has no idea how it came to be flying round her garden.

Mrs Hunter's brother, a keen birdwatcher, later identified it as a black-crested cockette, which is found in the wild in Mexico and Central America. She said: "I just can't think where it could have come from. It was so tiny - not much bigger than a large bee - and it was drinking the nectar in the flowers by my back doorstep."

She can only think that her visitor must have been an escapee from a private collection nearby.