Clarity

I'm emphatically not a twitcher. Travelling all over the countryside at breakneck speed to join hoards of people all arriving at the same location in a haze of noxious exhaust smoke and noise before peering through my bins at some hapless speck in the near distance before haring off to the next destination is not my idea of fun, or a good way to treat the countryside.

There are three carefully-selected places that we go, and then when we go we will spend 4-6 hours in situ, generally in blissful silence for most of that time. We enjoy it for the fresh air, the quiet, the National Trust places that we generally visit in the area also, and mostly of all for the pleasure of watching the behaviour of the birds, animals, insects and plants in their natural settings. We've seen too many amazing sights to mention, but the highlights have been a magpie mum teaching her little one how to break into the skin of a dead rabbit, a sparrowhawk hunting a kingfisher (the kingfisher got away, but it was a close thing) and a visit from an enormous hornet who seemed to want to keep an eye on us and make sure we were not up to any mischief!

We did a fair amount of this enjoyable, peaceful and sometimes thrilling pastime during my week off a couple of weeks ago now. The weather was magnificent too - pouring rain and howling winds for a while, then blazing sunshine and fluffy little clouds.

High summer is so beautiful - I can just stare and stare for hours.