A moment of pleasure

Nature is vital for our wellbeing. As soon as I step outside my front door my mood lifts. In my opinion, nature studies should be brought back into schools. At my infants school we had a nature table where we were encouraged to bring in things like conkers, acorns and anything nature-related. I loved it and I still love it. If you instill an awareness of nature into a child it is there for life. This is what I've tried to do with my grandson from when he was about 2 years old - now he's 12. I've always told him that he will notice things other people don't. Recently he told me he'd seen a Stag Beetle and last week he watched a Kestrel hovering. I'm so pleased. So many children have no idea about nature and it makes me so sad.

Isn't it amazing how things are different, .... but the same in different countries. BradfordLass72 In my garden in the Adelaide foothills (South Australia), I have brilliantly coloured parrots, grey and pink cockatoos and white cockatoos with yellow combs (called sulphur crested cockatoos). I get immense pleasure from watching them and listening to kookaburras cackling in the gum trees near my house.

My absolute favorite , the blackbird. Thank you for the tip about cooked rice CanOnlyTry - much appreciated.

BradfordLass72
The feel of flour in the bag resonates with me too. Baking is so relaxing and the magic happens in the oven.
The simple pleasures in life are so uplifting.
Many a time, whilst out walking, I have passed some greenery or a bush the smell of which transports me back to childhood holidays in Wales or fragrant lilac in my mum's garden.

I watched my first outdoor wash of the year blow beautifully in the breeze a couple of days ago. Heartwarming sensation. I know it's only a pleasant glitch in the weather and there may be more inclement stuff ahead but it's a harbinger for me and.....we have kicked awful January into touch. I too have heard birds having a rant. Lovely. Not smart enough to know if blackbirds were involved.

Snowdrops suddenly appearing and kind young men and women stopping to help people much older than themselves.

My daughter and I were watching a yellow wagtail in my garden the other day. I get robins blackbirds blue tits, last year it was a woodpecker and a tree creeper as well as the resident squirrel. I have a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. I find the small birds like dried mealworms, peanuts and birdseed. I've had trouble keeping them in water that isn't frozen these very cold days.

The early spring birdsong has really got going in South Buckinghamshire and it is enchanting. The garden is full of squirrels, magpies, jays, blackbirds, robins and many smaller birds. Primroses are blooming and catkins hang on the trees. The are many beech trees and beech woods around this part of the country and their long, furled leaves are beginning to show. A couple of camellia flowers are about to come out. It's all busy and glorious here, even in the dismal rain.

Our blackbirds, pheasants and tits haven't waited for Valentine's Day - they are paired already and defending territories in the case of the blackbirds. The woodpeckers have not started drumming yet though.

Our daffodils were already up and showing above the recent snow.

Thank you lovely gransnetters ? these are a few of my favourite things (humming the tune)

Exactly the same thing!!!
Seeing and hearing the birds lately AND feeding them
While on here btw TOP TIP I've recently acquired in that birds (Blackbirds especially) absolutely LOVE cooked rice - be careful not to add salt but they come flocking for it and we regularly see up to 6 feeding together! Hope that might be another thing to give you another moment of pleasure MaggieMay60

Snowdrops in the churchyard, aconites showing their sunny little faces, a robin perching on my fence and singing its little heart out...

Although I live in suburbia there's a park over the road at the back, and a green in front, and we get loads of birds. Rather annoying when the seagulls get going later in the year but at the moment we're enjoying all sorts of early spring birdsong. It does uplift one.

What a lovely positive thread. So much better than negatively. Birds singing , friendly people , the sunshine today , snowdrops and crocii flowering all brought a smile to my face this morning

Another strange moment of joy for me was when my dgs and I were cooking.
He needed to sprinkle a little more flour so we could roll pastry and he plunged his hand deep into the bag.

'I LOVE the feel of flour, it's so soft and comforting.' he said.
And amazingly, that's exactly how I used to think as a child - and still do.

And the sight of a glass of clean water in the sunshine is pure magic.

Birds for me too. I came across a heron out in the open the other day and watched it for ages while it poked around. And this morning as I was walking the dog, a large group of swans flew overhead in formation, honking away and heading for the nearby lake. So surprising and beautiful and lovely to remember. Nature is wonderful, even if you live in town like I do.

I saw on some TV documentary that when the UK was largely covered with forest, robins would follow wild pigs as they foraged, to pick up the worms and grubs they dug up.

So I'm afraid that to robins, gardening humans are just an updated version of foraging wild pigs.

Birdsong is the thing that lifts my Spirits as well.
I have a bird table outside my kitchen window and spend a fortune filling it up every morning with peanuts and seeds.
The little robin and blue-tits and blackbirds are usually waiting for me, then sometimes a flock of Starlings will come marauding around and finish the lot.
If I haven't noticed the bird table being empty, the little robin sits dead still on the edge of it and stares and stares at me through the kitchen window until I go out with some more. They're clever little things!

Well, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be the day the birds choose their mates, so perhaps they are trying to impress with their singing.

Oh washerwoman I thought he'd taken a fancy to me!

KatyK - I was reading something about birds the other day and it said the reason robins often follow us around the garden,and come so close is that they are opportunistic scavengers and as we dig,rake and tidy up we disturb the bugs and worms they love to eat.I still like to think our red breasted residents appear so often because they like me !

On the school run yesterday morning, I took the back lane instead of going down the main road. So glad I did! I saw a small herd of deer standing in a corpse of trees, about 10 metres from the lane. I just had to stop the car and watch them for a few minutes. They were so close that I could see clouds of their breath! Made my week, never mind my day!

Lovely. A few weeks ago I was sweeping up leaves on the front drive and a little robin popped out from under a bush in next door's garden. He bobbed down onto our drive and came very close to me as I swept. He seemed to be watching. Next time I was out there he appeared again. It was heartwarming.

We are lucky to have loads of birds Iin our garden,including several pairs of blackbirds,.Well I do spend almost as much feeding them all as us DH says !But they bring so much pleasure,especially in winter when they are more visible.I did a bit of tidying up the other day and two competing robin's were singing across the garden to each other. And blackbirds have the most beautiful song.

It's birds for me too.
There's a blackbird lives in the Pittisporum only a few feet from my deck and open doors and sometimes he sings very quietly to himself.
A Tui wakens me most mornings and to human eyes the sky is still pitch black but he knows it's morning.
In winter it's a Grey Warbler's trill which heralds the dawn.