I've been v v busy.

I'm just about to finish another doubler pic (diptych).

In timed breaks away from my pic - the thinking/deciding break - I've been looking through my observatory window. It's a window seat really. Not framing your usual rectangular or square window, but framing 2 windows that form a triangular sitting space. As I've told you before, this cottage is quirky! (Remember my studio and living space are on the top floor?)

And the window seat is quite large. I can stretch out and confidently nap on it. I seem to have easily managed this quite a few times over the last 12 months that I've been here!

From this observatory, I can look into, not only my own back garden but also the back gardens of several neighbours. I'm not overlooked because of the umbrella of tree cover.

In my latest breaks, I've noticed the return of swallows and more recently, swifts. Usually swifts are noisy darting specks in high-up sky, but this year I've noticed them just above window height. I can tell you that they have tiny heads and, at close quarters, their large wings still look like chaotic boomerangs!

I've watched a sparrow suddenly dart at right angles to avoid the outstretched talons of a sparrowhawk - whose momentum took it skimming effortlessly over a treetop.

In late February on a sunny afternoon, a peacock butterfly woke up too early and started battering against the observatory window. It was nippy outside but I decided it was better to let it feel the fresh air on its wings than keep it captured inside. If it was lucky it might survive a couple of hours. I opened the window.

But I was mistaken. It beat its wings only a couple of times before a sparrow nipped round the corner, caught it and made off with its unexpected snack. Freedom can, alas, be quite fleeting!

A robin befriended me - out of desperation - in my frost-solid spring garden, when I was turning over the flowerbeds. He hoped I would toss him a worm, or something, I supposed. But there are no worms in my soil. No worms at all. Ever.

I debated this point with my sis. She agreed that soil used to be squirming with worms in our childhood. Where have they all gone? Is it coz we rely on shop-bought compost? Who knows.

My sis has a female blackbird who visits every morning when my sis cleans out her aviary. She throws it seeds and other tasty bits. She's called it Belinda.

My sis has 5 alert dogs. Nevertheless, Belinda has followed her through the porch, the hall and into her kitchen to emphasise her demand for breakfast. Although startled and bemused by the cheeping at her ankles, my sis KNEW Belinda needed breakfast.

I can recall, from childhood, all the sick birds in cotton-wool-lined shoeboxes, and her feeding them morsels in tweezers. She had an average success rate, I suppose. But the birds were on their last legs anyway. Thing is, she put in the effort and HAD successes. She knew what to do.

So although I call myself an Observer of birds, I would definitely call my sis a Bird Whisperer!