What a fantastic day, lovely birds and lovely birdsong, beautiful carpets of blue, white and yellow flowers and a bit of sheep husbandry thrown in for good measure!

Not just a bird walk at all: timber extraction, coppicing, badger setts and arable farming went alongside 21 species of bird recorded!

With his acute hearing, he is often able to identify a bird before it is seen – as with the crossbills that flew overhead.

It was a joy and a relief for 25 members to hear the birds of Frillinghurst and Grayswood giving their spring songs and calls on 13th April.

We resisted Jon’s invitation to sample the yellow crab apples strewn over the path – he warned that they were the sharpest he had ever tasted.

Jon passed on words of wisdom at the start “birds are put off more by wind than rain”, “humans hear more when ears are cupped”, “a group leader is more likely to share his sweets with a quiet group!” Fruitful words: the calls/songs of 19 species were identified.

Jon’s walk led from clay in the valley with mature woodland, past traditional pasture with ponds, towards sandier soils with coppiced chestnut. What a variety!

Great to see you last night and thanks for the pheasant prep lesson, I really enjoyed it: you are a good teacher.

I just wanted to thank you so much for being such a total star with xxxxxx this afternoon. Both he and xxxxxx were blown away by the whole experience, especially your bothering to talk them through it so personally. God knows if it will have any permanent effect on him, but we really, really appreciate the trouble you took.

It was great to learn so much from you about the birds and environment. Thank you especially for introducing me to Stonechats. I have now looked them up and was pleased to find out they were behaving exactly as they are supposed to!

Thank you for your patience and helpfulness all the way through the assessment process.

A HUGE THANK YOU  for such wonderful day. Everyone really enjoyed it and got so very much out of it. As you can imagine there was much chatting about the experience afterwards and at the lunch the following day too. Charlie gave some of the charcoal to his sister who draws- people were fascinated by how we had done it.

A very memorable day for Charlie— the last day of his 50’s! You mixed the activities up so well and the pace was absolutely perfect.I think Emily’s highlight was putting her head down a badger set hole, she did so well. We all took a lot from the day and certainly my dog walking has changed- looking up to identify the birds and generally more aware. Must find some sorrel soon- delicious. We all loved the experience and wonderful to be out all day too- no problems sleeping for anyone that night. Absolutely blissful- and yes there were moments of stillness and peace-delicious.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you so much for your support and contribution to the Farm Walk at Imbhams yesterday. I learnt a lot from you and I know the others all enjoyed it too. This is something that we must try to develop on the estate with you in the future.

We certainly did enjoy it, the children didn’t stop talking about it for several days and Olivia even felt compelled to do a presentation about it to her class in her ‘show and tell’ session! You clearly made an impression!

Thank you so much for a delightful walk yesterday morning.  I’ve never done that walk across the fields before and the view point was well worth seeing. Everyone appreciated your skills in recognising bird song and making us aware of animal signs and tracks. You really made us use our ears and eyes!