In his book "How to be a Bad Birdwatcher" and column for the RSPB Birds magazine, Simon Barnes has a theme he returns to which is about how our lives become enriched when we decide to "actively notice" and look out for beautiful things. He's talking about birds in particular but I guess you could apply this reasoning to anything.
So, yesterday having arrived early for a meeting, I went for a 20 minute walk around Otley Chevin (a local area of woodland park) just to see what I could see and ....... a sparrowhawk!
I've certainly started seeing more of these since taking up birding more deliberately in the last few years and as one of the top avian predators of woodland and gardens they're really worth seeing. Sometimes it's just a streak in hot pursuit of an alarm-calling blackbird or some such, sometimes perched sentinel still, "casing the joint", preparing for a kill or, as yesterday, soaring above the tree-tops, lifting my soul.
Our house backs onto woodland and we get all sorts of birds. Lots of long-tailed tits as well as the usual blue and great tits, and the occasional coal tit. Tawny owls call to each other up and down the valley in the evening, and I've seen my very first treecreepers (bit like one of thse magic eye pictures, looking for treecreepers - they're there, but you can't see them until you get your eyes adjusted to the right scale).
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