A WOMAN who founded a bird hospital 20 years ago claims she has been barred from the premises.

Irena Zalsiewicz says the committee which now runs the Greenmount Wild Bird Hospital in the Kirklees Valley, Bury, asked her by registered letter to return the keys to them.

And Mrs Zalsiewicz says that when she later visited the two-acre site between Brandlesholme and Tottington with bird food, she found that the locks had been changed.

She said: "I feel like I have wasted my life. I worked for 20 years to build that sanctuary

"Now I cannot enter and I am extremely sad that I can't see my birds."

For months she has been locked in a bitter row with the bird hospital committee about the way it is run.

She claims it has been reduced to a clinic, while she always intended it to be a safe haven for wild birds and a place where people could visit.

She claimed that even one of the present helpers at the centre had told her it "was not a bird sanctuary" any more.

Mrs Zalasiewicz said she "missed her birds", including the gulls she saved 20 years ago, a pair of crows which she has looked after for more than 30 years, and a pair of devoted rooks whom she feared might be split up.

She said the matter was now in the hands of her solicitor.

Chairwoman of the Greenmount Wild Bird Hospital, Sharon Lowe, said they had no comment to make.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.