The problem is dragging myself away!! Back at work after a week in the Hebrides it is more difficult, especially with early starts and evening meetings. No corncrakes this week! I miss their crecking. Just to prove how cold it was this year up there, I watched an Iceland gull, blown off course by recent storms and very at home on the windblown shores. But on Monday I was up at Hauxley and had great close ups of a pair of bullfinches and on the way there a cuckoo, very impressive.

I have been mindful of spending 30 minutes at least at the start of the day and in the evening in the garden or on the coast near where I live, just absorbing the atmosphere of this cold but very green spring. I find it grounding to do this, and any tensions seem to slide away as I get closer to the nature around me. I swear the brightness of the new leaves and the light at this time of year give me an extra uplift. It’s the surprising things that just turn up as well that excite, as with the bullfinch and cuckoo but also this week an oystercatcher on the road verge next to a chemical works and a buzzard floating about on the wind near Hartlepool. You never know what’s coming next and a lot can happen in 30 minutes when you go natural!