Thank you for all your kind messages about Merlin. Each one is greatly appreciated.

What a difference a day makes to how the world feels. After several days of gloom, today we had blue sky and 12.5 degrees!

The berries are prolific this year. The blackthorn blossom I photographed in the March lockdown has now turned into sloes. Like the white blossom, they smother the hedgerows.

This morning there was a flock of starlings chattering away as they ate the sloes. A blackcap hidden somewhere in the prickly branches sang beautifully to us as walked past.