I’ve been to my office today for the first time in more than a week. I’m now exhausted!

On my way past, I noticed this lovely carved wooden sculpture of an owl on the edge of a field on the outskirts of Epsom. I’d never seen it before, I’m not sure if it’s new or if I’ve just failed to notice it for the last eleven years as I’ve passed this spot! I like it but David says it looks like a potato on a stick!

Don’t you just love owls? There are several round here, we hear them hooting each night when we’re in bed. It’s such a fabulous sound of the countryside, even though we’re in the crowded South East, we back onto the RMA (Royal Military Acadamy) at Sandhurst, where there are miles of woodlands that remain untouched except when the officers(!?!) are doing manoeuvres.

I’m not an ardent birdwatcher really, just someone who loves being able to attract as many different species of bird into the garden as possible. I’ve read all the books, what kind of water they like (ponds or birdbaths), what to feed them to attract the biggest variety and what sorts of place they like to nest.

I have some success, we had a family of wrens nesting in a box less than 12 feet from our back door last year. It was completely brilliant watching the parents feed them. I’d always thought they were too shy to nest that close to the house.

When I’m digging in my veggie plot a robin and a blackbird are always there waiting for me to turn over some nice juicy morsel for them. I was so excited when the robin landed on my head one day. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or him. He realised his mistake and hopped from my head onto an apple tree a few feet away and gazed at me with a slightly perturbed look in his face!

The best of all the birds in the garden though? The House Sparrow. How I adore the House Sparrow. They are disappearing from so many parts of the UK now – once our most common garden bird yet in some places they are completely missing from the local area. In my last house in Oxford, where I lived for three years, I never once saw a Sparrow in the garden at all. How I hated that. We have a little army of them here and very welcome they are too.

There is nothing quite like watching a thrush bounce up and down on top of the rabbit enclosure grabbing a beak full of berry with every hop. He’s too heavy to sit on the branch and eat them and can’t reach without jumping. It’s such an enchanting sight that last time I saw it happen, I sat and watched for an hour, completely mesmerised.

I’ve tried to photograph them with my G3 but the only ones who stay still long enough for the G3’s slow focus are wooden ones like this! I am filled with joy (and envy too) when I see Jean B’s bird shots or that lovely one Ann took of the bird on her glove. David has a system rigged up to photograph them with the 300D but lacks the patience (well actually probably the time at the moment he’s so busy) to sit it out and wait for the action!

We’re trying to tempt them onto the side of the house to make it easier to get good shots but so far to no avail.

I’m a bit of a saddo with them because I keep a list of ‘bird visitors to the garden’. Yeah, I know, a very ten-year-old activity, but I don’t care, it’s one of my little indulgences. Each time I see something I’ve not seen before, I rush inside, check out what it is, find my list and add it with glee. David is very strict with it – he won’t let me add a bird unless it actually lands on our property so I’m not allowed to add the owl that flew in front of me one night when I was lying in a deck chair watching the bats fly overhead in the dark.