Down to Earth: Spirits in need of a lift? Feed the birds

“The wonder of nature is all around us - if you only stop to look. . .” Feeding the birds is a small and simple thing, yet it can bring great joy, writes Robert Barker

I am sure there is a proverb or saying about seeing the world through a child’s eyes - annoyingly the only reference I can think of at this moment is the song ‘Through a Child’s Eyes’ by Bananarama. It would, I think, really help us all to appreciate the wonder of the world if we could view it through a child’s wide eyes, compared to the cynical, narrowed vision that comes with age.

I learned this lesson this week, and it was taught to me by my 9-year-old son. He has lots of the usual interests - computer games, football etc - but recently he has become really interested in nature, in particular birdwatching.

This spring he has decided to create a list of all the different species that he can see in one year and, of course, the first place to start looking for birds to write on his list is our garden.

Now, this is the part where my cynical, narrow vision gets a bit of a wake-up, because, like my son, I am also very interested in birdwatching and for years have been trying to entice several different birds into our garden.

Each time I loaded fresh seed into the feeders, I had an image in my mind of a multitude of different garden bird species swooping into our garden: “Look kids, there is yet another Pied Flycatcher on the bird feeders!”.

The sad truth is that all I ever seemed to attract was Starlings, Blue Tits and Robins, and even they would only visit rarely, as month after month the bird seed would go stale, and the peanuts would go moldy due to a complete lack of interest.

A few weeks ago, I read an article about peanut butter bird-food cakes. This sounded like something I could make with my son to enhance his interest, so we spent an hour or so making these fatty cakes for birds that deep down I knew they wouldn’t eat.

Once they were set, we put them in the garden, my son full of hope and proud of himself that he was doing his bit for nature, then we went inside and waited. Next came pure, incredible excitement from my son when birds - ordinary, nothing-to-be-excited-about birds in my cynical grown-up mind - started to eat the cakes.

Screams of: “Look, Dad! A Robin!”, “Wow, there’s a Blue Tit!”, “Can you believe it, there’s five Starlings!” While staring at him and seeing his joy, I realised how stupid I had been. The wonder of nature is all around us and if you only stop to look - through uncynical eyes - you can appreciate just how beautiful it all is.

See robertbarkerdesign.com for more.