Return of the native

This was supposed to have been a desk-bound day, as I continue the struggle to get back on top of all the stuff I allowed to slide over Christmas. But I'm never very good at doing what I ought to be doing, so I whizzed into town at lunchtime and spent half an hour in Holy Trinity churchyard instead, where I was happy to see two or three Nuthatches whizzing about, after not seeing a single one for over a month. This absence was puzzling because Nuthatches are notoriously sedentary, seldom straying far from their natal areas, and are one of the species that will defend a territory through the winter. Birds become secretive while moulting, but this can't be the explanation either, because far as I can establish, Nuthatches moult in late summer and early autumn. So it's a mystery. Anyway, today they were back, and it was the Robins who've been ruling the churchyard for the last month that suddenly went AWOL - allowing the Nuthatches to be the most frequent visitors to the food I put down.

I've been meaning to get my car cleaned for several weeks now and never quite getting round to it, but you can only drive around a swamp for so long before the mud spattered all over your car starts to look more like permanent dark brown render, and by this morning mine had reached the point at which I found myself trying very hard not to touch any of the external surfaces. So after churchyard birding, a brisk walk, and some coffee in Stratford, I headed out up the Chipping Campden road to a petrol station on the edge of the new housing development at Long Marston, where there's a hand car wash. Going to a hand car wash is an entirely new experience for me, and I was literally astonished by how hard the four guys running it were working, and how thoroughly they cleaned and polished my car. "Worth every penny," I said to R later, regaling him with details of the amount of soaping, pressure-washing, sponging, rinsing, drying and polishing that had gone on. Right now I'm driving one of the cleanest cars in the county, but I can't wait for it to get filthy so I can get it washed again.

This evening I did something else I've been failing to get round to for several weeks, put fingers to keyboard, and booked a couple of day trips to Skomer in the middle of June. R won't be coming with me this year, but is preparing to give bracing emotional support when I start mithering about how I'm too old and creaky to be doing this kind of stuff, catastrophising about all the things that might go wrong between here and the far edge of Pembrokeshire, and saying how much I wish I'd decided not to go, but to stay at home all summer instead. It'll be fine, goes the altos' mantra, and - in all probability - it will.