Easter holiday time — meeting up with extended family for an uplifting experience with plenty of memories created.
Yep, I’m well aware that’s not often the case for many, as more than a few disgruntlements or hot topics can unsettle the ambiance.
Not on this occasion. A very enjoyable gathering, providing real nourishment for mental health.
A highlight of the day was my surprising discovery of my nephew’s newfound interest in ornithology, with a particular focus on birdsong. His curiosity was infectious, the kind that makes you see the familiar differently.
Given our location at the edge of a national park in the south of England, he was more than willing to put his birdsong recognition app to the test — Merlin Bird ID.
What followed was a slow, meandering walk along woodland paths bordering farmland with his enthusiasm setting the pace.

Even though I added a few walking lunges and impromptu press-ups, the real workout was sensory: linnets, tits and goldcrests, plus the local farmer’s wife slowing her truck to confirm the presence of rare Red Kites in the area.
I’d heard birdsong many times before on this well-trodden route — yet today, apart from the occasional detour into playful, political ping-pong with the undergraduate studying politics and philosophy, there was a new appreciation and awareness of the nature around us.
In the past, while jogging along the same route without headphones, I’d become vaguely more aware of my surroundings — but even then, the hubbub of mental chatter, anatomical check-ins, and breathing left little room for genuine presence. Today felt different. Not because the route had changed, but because I was seeing it through someone else’s curiosity.
Using an app in nature could be viewed as counterintuitive and perhaps on another day it might have been. But today it served as a conduit to nature rather than a distraction from it, a reminder that awareness doesn’t always arrive on its own. Sometimes it needs a nudge. Or in this case, an eighteen-year-old with a smartphone.