Hello and Happy New Year – the high street might be strange and quiet but Nature is busy and I know at least 2 people who got binoculars in their Christmas stockings and are keen to get out and take a closer look at the wild world.

I've mentioned in a few video clips that an exciting part of creating a pre order campaign is the conversation that starts up and becomes part of the book and its narrative. Having never done a pre order campaign this was a delightful surprise. And funnily the conversation is still going on.

One week the conversation was about robins, then it was owls and then it was crows. That was the week I was reading books about crows and now it’s back to the owls again.

First an owl flew by in my meditation, it was really only a quick hi and, as it was a group meditation, when we later shared and someone else talked more extensively about an owl in their meditation it was as if it had briefly flitted by me and settled with my colleague.

Seemingly independently I was thinking about owls as I set out early the next morning to the Heath. We used to have an owl that lived nearby many years ago and I would hear its hoot in the early hours as I cradled wakeful children. And I kind of assumed that they’d left the city.

At my friend’s farm in Somerset I would walk out at dusk in the hope of catching sight of the white barn owl floating silently over the fields. And, at another friend’s farm in Devon they actually have barn owls that nest in an old barn. If you creep out quietly you’ll hear them hiss. This year her family got to hand rear a baby that had been jostled from his perch by bolshy siblings.

Anyhow as I met my friend at the Heath just before dawn, she said she thought she’d heard an owl but wasn’t sure, maybe it was a wood pigeon. We walked and talked and entered Kenwood as the light was beginning to come up and then we heard them, two tawny owls hooting and flying around in the tall trees. We stood for ages, just listening. It was so magical.

The next day I was there again with a different friend and just one owl, less hooting this time and then a few days later, same place, same time, as we walked up the path, there was the owl on a branch in front of us. Brown, round, large. I froze and gripped my friend’s arm and pointed. We caught a brief profile of her hunter’s face as she swooped away from us to another branch and then she floated soundlessly down the slope and into the trees.

There really is something very special about owls.

Here’s a recording I made that first day – you might need to turn it up loud.