I am coming to the conclusion that I am, perhaps, a latent naturalist.(Without any form of expertise, albeit.) Why it had to take me until I was in my thirties to see it, I don’t know. I think the signs have always been there, but it’s as if the parts are only just summing together. If you look at my instagram account and also my previous blogs, I believe that more than half of my pictures and words seem to revolve around the natural world outside, my experience of it, what I have seen, heard, found and felt.
I am one of those people who simply cannot come back empty handed from a walk and have a growing collection of feathers, leaves, bones, stones and such that have taken my interest. In unenlightened years this would firmly have had me regarded as a witch. Fifty years ago it would have been an acceptable and healthy pastime – for boys, but certainly not young ladies. 
And now, not only are we losing so much of our natural land but, through fear and non-understanding of perceived dangers, people are not so encouraged to go out and explore; to touch what they see and interact with the natural world.
A day or two ago I took a work break and wandered outside because I had a strong need to feel the grass under my feet. I have spent a lot of my life barefoot and it occurred to me that so many of us see but have no real and tangible connection with nature. It’s like we go to a beauty spot, point at a tree, exclaim at a beautiful butterfly on the path, take a great picture of the sun on a river; but almost as if it were all happening one step removed, behind a pane of glass.
I am aware that, although I have always felt my connection to the natural world at a level I can only describe as, deeper-than-bone, I have never really put an awful lot of effort into learning academically about it. Until recently, that is, where it seems my natural instincts and feelings have decided perhaps that it was time to team up with my brain.
As part of this, I am trying to learn about the hidden landscape that lies like a second world on top of our own: that is the soundscape of birds. I have spent my life saying, ‘Oooh, I wish I knew what that was,’ whenever I heard a bird sing, and yet it wasn’t until a friend pointed me in the direction of some very useful audio and visual learning tools, that I began to do anything about it. Together with this person’s enthusiasm and encouragement to keep having a go I now find that I am hearing a busy metropolis of activity with many layers that I had previously allocated to: nice but indistinguishable background noise.
I have a long way to go. I am also becoming a bit of a nerd; I have a notebook in the kitchen in which I have started to write down the birds I have seen that day – and even recording what the weather was like. Short of wearing a pair the whole time (which, if I start doing this, someone please have a word with me) I am forever dashing from room to room to retrieve my binoculars which are never in the place I want them at the time.
There is a hoard of rowdy, bickering, sweary sparrows which shout from the hedges and are usually first on the bird feeder each morning. They seem to be scared of nothing and despite being widely thought of as, ‘just a little brown bird (LBB),’ I actually think they are quite robust, stocky things that take no nonsense from anyone or anything, making me think of the 
typecast characters played by Ray Winstone: and so, despite one of the widely accepted collective nouns for them being a, ‘quarrel,’ (which is, intact, rather apt) I may use a Winstone of sparrows as my preference.
I encourage you all, to whip off those shoes and socks and allow your souls* to be in contact with the natural world.
*Yes, wordplay absolutely intended 🙂