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The last of our bird ID walks was in Edinburgh last Sunday. Our bird ID trainer, Scott, was very excited when I arrived at the meeting point, having just seen a goshawk flying over Haymarket. The sightings carried on with a pair of displaying sparrowhawks as our 12 participants arrived, and in total we totted up 21 species between the start of the Roseburn Path (route 1) and the Ravelston Dykes access ramp. The ramp is always a hotspot for flocks of small birds, and didn’t fail us this time with a group of seven bullfinches, long-tailed tits, siskins prising open the treetops for seeds and greenfinches starting to sing. We also recorded 13 species for the RSPB Birdwatch during the first hour of the walk. When I logged on to work the next day, lots of volunteers had emailed to tell me what they’d seen during their Birdwatch surveys on the National Cycle Network – a flock of 20 redwings, bramblings, kestrels and much more. I hope, for all our participants and volunteers and me, these January outings are just the start of a good year of bird-spotting.

I reckon I have about 20 more hours to do for my Explorer Award and I have bold intentions to finish it before I take a short career break in April. So it was great to turn over to February on our new calendar yesterday and find this. A daily reminder as I head for the kettle, that I have birds to find!

It had been a long two years of anticipation, with postponements and cancellations and, in the end, a tense wait to see if indoor Covid restrictions would be lifted 4 days before the concert date, but the Lost Words Spell Songs finally came to Perth on Friday night and it was worth every second of the wait and more. Spell Songs is a two-album ‘musical evolution’ of the books The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris as a response to nature words being removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. The Spell Songs singers are an ensemble of world-class musicians stretching from Orkney and the Hebrides to Senegal, via Pathhead and Manchester, and their songs are in turn heart-wrenching, beautiful and totally uplifting. Friday’s concert sang us songs of birds - jays, snow buntings, curlews, swallows, skylarks, herons, kingfishers, goldfinches, swifts - and more, while Jackie Morris painted foxes and otters and oak leaves in the background. It was my first return to a big venue, and to live folk music and art since the pandemic started and I wasn’t the only one entirely moved by the whole experience. The next day we heard that the third date in their five-date tour had to be cancelled because of damage to the venue caused by Storm Malik. There’s something tragic about their voices – so strong in support of preserving nature and protecting the environment - being silenced by one of the extreme weather events that are increasing due to human-influenced climate change. At the end of our concert, Kris Drever had said that pre-pandemic he’d thought that his job was to go to different places and play music to people, but had realised over the last two years that it is actually to play music *with* people - I’m so pleased that I was able to be one of them this time.

Prompted by a bird walk coming up on my local path in Edinburgh, I let some local volunteers know that myself and my colleague, Hannah, would be heading out for a litterpick. It was lovely to be joined by a couple of them after a long time of not getting together because of fluctuating Covid restrictions. We talked hillwalks, wildlife, wassailing, being a TV extra and more, while collecting 12 bags of litter from route 1 over a couple of hours. Hannah and I went back out a few days later to finish off some bits we didn't get to, and picked up another 3 bags' worth, while also having some work chat that otherwise would have had to be online. It's so good to be getting outside more to volunteer and work...it brings good health to us and the routes!

Our third bird ID walk was in Bowling, where a huge infrastructure project has just been completed to create a new traffic-free connection on route 7 by transforming a 124-year old bridge which has sat derelict since the Caledonian and Dunbartonshire Railway closed in 1960. The new link is inspired by New York’s Highline and gives good views of the Clyde, as well as the Forth & Clyde canal before joining the original route to head through woodland going towards Milton. This mix of habitats gave us 30 species in all – cormorants, mute swans and goldeneye on the canal, oystercatchers and heron in the harbour, and nuthatches, wrens, finches and tits in the woodland. But we weren’t expecting the peregrine falcon that flew overhead as we were on the Bowline – most of us wouldn’t have been able to identify it from the ground, but our walk leader Scott spotted the barrel chest, pointed wings and dark moustache. It’s the fastest creature on the planet, so a speedy spot is needed, and it was one that made everyone's day.

Our bird ID walks are not only great fun and introducing new people to the National Cycle Network and to bird characteristics and calls, but they have given me another opportunity to ‘share’ for my Award…via the medium of wool! This magpie is off to Kinross with the bird expert who leads our walks. But knitting birds does make you pay attention to the finer details – how high on the head is the beak, how big should the eyes be, what are their feet like? - so I reckon I’m ‘exploring’ too!

"I don’t think we’ll see much here." These were the words of one of the local volunteers who litterpicks on route 7 at Paisley Canal, as he joined our bird ID walk last week. But he was delighted to be proved wrong as we totted up 22 species including displaying goldcrests and lesser redpolls.

All the leaves have gone but some new buds are forming on our garden flowers