Love awakened by Basil the cockerel

Jan 8 2009 by Brian Daniel, The Journal

A COCKEREL evicted from a Tyneside housing estate after a complaint about his crowing has found love.

Basil was found in a garden on Henderson Avenue in Whickham, Gateshead, last April.

He made it his base under the watchful eye of homeowner Joyce Callaghan, but Gateshead Housing Company told her he had to go after it received a complaint.

A campaign to save him was launched on networking website Facebook, with more than 2,300 people signing up from around the world, but the company would not budge.

After hearing of Basil’s plight, Claire Thorburn, who lives on a farm near Bamburgh in Northumberland, stepped in.

After the death of her cockerel Henry, she had 23 hens starved of male company.

Claire offered Basil a home on the 1,200-acre farm she shares with partner Francis Watson- Armstrong and his children William, Rosie and Juliet.

The cockerel quickly hit it off with a former battery hen by the name of Bonnet, who had arrived at the farm’s Millennium Towers shed last summer.

When the birds leave their respective homes in the morning, the first thing they do is find each other.

And the lovesick Bonnet waddles behind Basil wherever he goes.

Claire said: “He has literally taken under his wing this ex-battery hen Bonnet. It is quite sweet – it is a case of love conquers all.”