About

Two places, that is all this site covers. The first is a small back garden with a hawthorn, an old apple tree, two feeders and a bird bath that freezes solid in January. The second is the stretch of river at the bottom of the lane, from the footbridge to the weir, which I walk most mornings before work. Between them they give me around sixty species a year, nearly all of them common, and I have stopped being embarrassed about how pleased that makes me.

I write down what I see with the date, rough numbers and the weather, because memory is a liar about when the swifts arrived. There are no rarities here and no photographs worth the name. There is a pair of binoculars on the windowsill and a pencil on a string.