The sky, this morning. Perfect blue and fluffy clouds!

How often do you stop and look up at the sky? While I was hanging out the washing today, I looked up and saw a perfect blue sky. Such a beautiful sight, but so often overlooked as we walk about, head down or looking at the road ahead. It seemed to be such a perfect moment, the farmer was busy ploughing the field that backs onto our garden, being followed by a flock of black headed gulls, swooping and calling as he turned over the earth. I ran inside to grab my camera, such a beautiful sky deserves to be remembered.

This morning I heard my first cuckoo of the year.  At first I thought I had misheard, but no, definitely a cuckoo. I’ve never seen one, I only recognise it’s song (actually, that’s not strictly true, we once watched a female blackbird trying to feed a cuckoo fledgling). Now that the cuckoo is back, it is definitely spring. We are woken every morning by the dawn chorus, I lie in bed listening to the blackbird, I know it’s him sitting high among the cherry blossom. I don’t need to see him, I know he’s there, competing with robins and sparrows to be heard.

I was walking on the edge of  Delamere Forest, one of the nicer parts, filled with native trees, not the tall, sparse Scots Pine. A robin was serenading me, a woodpecker was drilling, high in the trees. So many birds and yet I couldn’t see any of them. I felt sorry for the posse of young mums pushing their strollers, wrangling toddlers, too busy discussing haircuts and last night’s TV in shrill voices to notice the lone cherry tree covered in the deepest pink blossom (they walked straight past it, not even pausing or glancing in its direction), the runner plugged into head phones couldn’t hear the birdsong that made me stop in my tracks. He had no idea the smile on my face was because of that first cuckoo.

Tiny thing on leaves – how often do we walk past without even seeing them?

I began to think about all the things we know are there, but hardly ever see. The tiny insects we miss, the first buds on the trees (one minute they are all bare branches, the next they’re bursting into leaf). I realised how many birds I recognise by their song or from the briefest of glimpses (a jay, swooping n front of me as I drove along a country lane, a kingfisher, spied from a bridge as we fed the ducks, listening to the song of a nightingale when were on holiday last summer).

A small patch of bluebells by the edge of the car park.

I took my camera out, to try and capture the overlooked, the missed and the ignored. A few pretty snaps that capture just another spring day. Nothing special, no rare bird sightings or beautifully captured shots, just nature at her mundane best. These are the moments in my day that are special, only appreciated when you slow down, take time to listen and look for  the small things.

Comma butterfly, sunning herself.