Commuters at a railway station in Bristol are getting used to sharing the platform while waiting for their trains - with a brood of chickens.
Bemused rail passengers getting on and off trains at Montpelier station, in the heart of inner-city Bristol, have been taking pictures and wondering why the facilities on the single platform include half a dozen hens, casually rooting around in the undergrowth.
The first pictures of a chicken at Montpelier station emerged last week - and back then it seems it was just the one.
But she obviously got a taste for the varied plants, seeds, roots, bugs, worms and insects to be found in the verge along the platform edge, and told her friends - because this week, some commuters pictured as many as six chickens hanging out, waiting for the 11.19am service to Severn Beach.
The line through Montpelier comes from Temple Meads and heads out to Avonmouth and the Severn Estuary, and trains run roughly twice an hour each way during the day - although none of them on the suburban branch line could be described as ‘eggspress trains’, so perhaps that why none of the hens have yet to hop on board.
But if the chickens were to take advantage of the lack of a ticket barrier at the station and get on board, they have the choice of a short trip to Clifton Down, the stations of west Bristol out towards Avonmouth and ultimately Severn Beach.
The more adventurous chickens could get to Temple Meads and, in theory, then explore the rest of the country by train.
Angela Le Peuple said she saw half a dozen there on Monday this week, after a shopping trip to Clifton Down.
“As I waited by the train door to alight, I spotted them on the platform, raised bed area, and turned to the chap behind me and said: ‘the chickens are back’,” she said.
“He looked at me as if I were a bit crazy, then, as we got off the train and I approached the chickens, he followed behind, and laughed and was astonished,” she said.
The people of Montpelier are no strangers to experiencing the kind of fauna one would not expect to find in inner-city Bristol - last year, sightings of deer scampering about the terraced streets were common, and the area has long been the subject of a decades-long research of the local fox population - which is something the chickens of Montpelier train station probably need to read up on.
GWR tweeted on Wednesday about the chickens, and asked if anyone had lost one - but the local residents who have long been used to seeing the chickens out and about say they are not lost at all.
The eastern end of the platform has a wall - and over the other side of that wall is a small allotments area. “They hop over the wall from the allotments behind the station, and hop back again each evening. It's amazing the foxes haven't had a juicy dinner yet,” added Angela.
