Here in West Yorkshire we are surrounded by rivers and canals which are home to one of our most brightly coloured and unique indigenous birds, the kingfisher (Alcedo atthis).

Kingfishers are fairly common birds along UK rivers but aren’t regularly noticed because they are small, fast and elusive. You might spot a flash of lightening-blue as one rockets along a river. In my life I think I’d only ever seen a kingfisher once, perhaps twice.

Since before we moved to our little farm I’ve been meaning to look for kingfishers, Chris’ sister told us she regularly sees lots along the canals near us. Despite walking the canals and rivers myself, to date I’d yet to see one near us. If you’d like to spot a kingfisher, look to clean, slow moving or still water containing fish.

Then I heard about a particular kingfisher known affectionately as ‘the local celebrity’ because of its carefree disposition around people. I popped down with my wildlife lens and after a short wait, was treated to a magical day alongside the kingfisher as they went about fishing.

This particular kingfisher is a young female. You can tell she’s female by the orange tinge under her beak, males have entirely black beaks. I should really be calling her queenfisher, so let’s do that. If we’re lucky, she may breed in spring and teach other kingfishers to be tolerant of awe struck Homo sapiens.

The first thing I’ll say about the queenfisher is how impossibly cute she is. Fluffy with sweet eyes that are constantly aimed at the water. They are much smaller birds than imagined from photos, a couple of centimetres bigger than a robin. In fact, she reminded me a lot of a robin, not only for the colourful chest but the shape of the head when front on. A mix between a robin, a long-tailed tit and woodpecker. And perhaps some other exotic bird. The Woodland Trust says kingfishers are twice as heavy as a robin despite being of similar size because they are more muscular, I’d guess also because they are filled with fish!

Able to stand very close to the queenfisher as she went about her day I was able to fully observe her colours. Kingfishers are even more beautifully coloured than I’d imagined. Mixed shades of copper-orange contrasting against their black-indigo upper half and wings studded with lightening blue spots and the vibrant stripe down their back. Plus a splash of white on their collar and under their chin.

Their flight - to me at least - is reminiscent of a hummingbird because their wings flap quickly as they fly rather than always gliding. Often the queenfisher would jump into the air, hover momentarily to refine her position before plunging into the water, like an arrow, with a mighty splosh. Re-emerging with a fish, a ripple of water in her wake.

I was surprised by how much the queenfisher ate. She didn’t stop hunting for minnows and small fish for the few hours I was there. Ably spotting and catching a fish at least every 15 minutes, if not more. I suppose kingfishers must expend a lot of energy with their rapid flight, swimming and from the cold water.

In terms of behaviour, she clearly had known spots where fish congregate and would land on a perch, plunge to catch a fish before carrying it to the other side to knock unconscious against a twig, eat it and then repeat the process. Perching a couple of feet above the water on a placed stick, bramble or hedge.

Eventually, she would move on from where we were to neighbouring rivers. Clearly with at least three favourite spots. Before coming back a short time later.

I felt privileged that this little queenfisher felt at ease with the steady stream of walkers and photographers, allowing us to observe her antics. I was also grateful to be around other wildlife enthusiasts who taught me about kingfishers and also tips on photography.

A friendly photographer (thanks Darren!) helped with my settings and told me that kingfishers nest in the ground on steep muddy banks, similar to puffins. I had no idea they did that, it was a day of learning about both kingfishers and photography. According to the Woodland Trust, kingfishers can lay up to 7 eggs in a clutch and have multiple broods a year. Though they are susceptible to very cold winters and polluted rivers.

When I eventually tore myself away I overheard one lady out for a walk say, “I’m 63 and that’s the first time I’ve seen a kingfisher”. The wonder of this close encounter felt by everyone entranced by this beautiful little bird happy to share her spot in the wild.

Today is a new year. A still and lightly misted morning on the day after the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year has come and gone, Planet Earth moved past one apex of its orbit, when the North Pole is angled furthest from the sun. Today has fractionally more daylight, tomorrow a little more. Daffodils and snowdrops poke through the ground to catch the light in our garden, hellebore flower stems stretching upward.

But I’m not in our garden, I’m out for a walk to find the kestrel. I see it whenever I don’t have my camera. When I take my camera the kestrel is nowhere. I am the worst wild bird photographer in the world.

It doesn’t stop me and today I start my mission to photograph the kestrel. Setting out along moor-side grasslands, waiting for its shape or movement. Often it will sit there, on a wooden pole looking at me, unbothered.

Once I caught the kestrel off guard while I photographed nuts from inside a tree. It too flew into the canopy to perch only to find me, about turning a few feet from my face, shouting at me quietly before flying off silently.

As I walk, a small flock of geese call from behind before flying overhead and out across the valley. The call feels aimed at me, an acknowledgement. Turning to continue, I see it, the kestrel, flying out from the heather and bilberry.

Kicking myself slightly because this is what happened the other week in exactly the same spot. This time I keep my eyes on its path and tread carefully around the brow of the hill it flew over and sure enough, its body is silhouetted on a fence post.

I photograph the kestrel and we spend a few minutes looking at each other before it flies on again.

I think for a moment about the year ahead in the stillness of this morning. The hill opposite feels larger today, impossibly large. Holding its moor high in the sky. It’s hard not to reflect on our lives at this time of year when the world around us slows or stops.

Whether we like making new year resolutions or not, I don’t know many who don’t reassess how things are going at this time of year. It’s good to be positive, dwell on the ups and the successes, they’re part of our story. What are our hopes and dreams, what is the first step toward them?

My world is a chaos of writing, photography, gardening and increasingly painting and drawing. All tied to nature, a way to express my awe and love for the natural world. In the year ahead I’d like to press on with each of these art forms, inching forward with new ideas that lead to incremental improvements in what my hands can make.

I keep coming back to the idea of a return to education, something related to ecology, but where to start? Perhaps all I need to do this year is find out what that first step would be.

There’s the kestrel again, I notice it at the top of the naked tree. Perched on the highest twig defying gravity. Branches and stems against a watercolour sky. The kestrel watches me between scans of the ground.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday and year ahead. As always, thank you for your support and comments across the last year.

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Of all the birds, it’s the long-tailed tits that care least about my existence. They literally couldn’t give two flaps that I’m here in the garden as they dance around me, leap frogging one another from tree to tree. It’s as if I am not here at all.

Distinctive is the word I’d use for long-tailed tits, with that visibly long tail, black and grey markings and rounded fluff ball bodies with pookie eyes. They effortlessly straddle the art of cute and cool.

I often hear them coming before I spot them, their distinctive clicking noise as they prowl the garden hedges and fruit trees for aphids and other small insects to eat. What are they saying to one another? Are they talking to themselves? Telling each other what they’ve found? Having a gossip?

Yesterday I watched mesmerised as the same pair in front of me clicked around the front of our house clinging to the stone window frames and walls warmed in the sun. This is where red spider mites, spiders and other insects crawl catching some rays, hoping they too won’t be caught.

I wish the long-tailed tits would care about me because they’re one of my favourite birds. Fluffy faces and too cool for school striped wings, a racing car tail. They’re like a teddy bear crossed with a caped superhero. Super Tits.

Their nests are a sphere of moss, feathers and lichen, weaved around tiny twigs of shrubs and small trees in hedgerows. A cosy fairytale home for their chicks to be raised by both parents. Stretchy and soft, a living fleece.

p.s. this week’s Garden Design Guide lesson for paid subscribers is on making ponds of all types for your garden ecosystem...

Ethereal being. Grace and wonder. Soaring over frozen grass at dusk, quieter than silence, weaving your invisible trail of absorbed sound.

Tyto alba, the barn owl. Tyto means owl, alba means white.

Of all the owls that call the United Kingdom home, the pale brown and white barn owl is both magical and the easiest to spot. Especially in leaden winter when its size and colour contrast against its surroundings at dawn and dusk.

With plant life at its lowest height of the year in winter, and food scarce, barn owls can be spotted with ease around any farmland up and down the country at this time. Although predominantly crepuscular, which means active at dawn and dusk, I’ve seen barn owls in the north and south hunting as much in the day, at anytime of year.

True to their name, barn owls roost in barns and derelict buildings, nesting in them in spring and summer. Forming pairs that look after a brood of up to 4 - 6 owlets.

Barn owls are predators, hunting other animals for food. According to the Barn Owl Trust, their diet is predominantly made up of field voles, common shrews, wood mice and rats.

Their big eyes give them good eyesight in low light but it’s their hearing that is their strongest sense and what they use to find and target their prey. Barn owl ears are at different levels on either side of their head, allowing them to more accurately locate the position of a sound. They fly low around grassland listening, before hovering to pinpoint where the sound is coming from and then pouncing.

According to the RSPB, a barn owl’s body is about 33 - 39cm, its wingspan 80 - 90cm. A large bird because of those beautiful wings but if you look at them in flight, they are mostly head and no body. A wedge of feathers.

Search for barn owl skeleton online, and you’ll also find they are all feather, with a deceptively long hidden neck used for looking around and down in flight.

Their sound, when they make one, is a rasping screech, heard occasionally at night when perched in woodland. It’s a haunting noise as unique as their look.

If you’d like to spot a barn owl, take a look at RSPB and Wildlife Trust nature reserves near you. Or simply take a walk in your nearest farmland. I’ve seen the most barn owls around working and derelict farms in North Yorkshire, the midlands and around the south, such as Kent, Sussex and Surrey.

Walking down the slope of our farm carrying my heavy wildlife lens looking for birds and finding none, I chance my luck in the meadows. A robin sings somewhere close by, the distant call of a jackdaw in the light mist. Either will do, I love them all. A gull glides too far away in the sky. When ahead of me, in the grass at the far end of the field a movement and, after almost four years of sharing this place with them, I know who it is, the family of roe deer that call this hill home. Having a rest in the grass, which is dry for once.

I’d never expected to become an expert on roe deer but I can feel it slowly happening to me. Knowledge through osmosis of living in proximity of one another. I always try to avoid calling them our roe deer, that instinct of ownership is a human trait I dislike that doesn’t fit our true wild way. Instead, the roe deer are one of the hill’s magical entities, dancing in and out of nature’s veil. Always present, existing with us and yet always at a distance apart. Sometimes dependably there, other times vanished until ready to reveal themselves again. Like all wildlife, they live in another realm.

And there’s truth to that because, we’re guilty of imagining the world only as we experience it through our human senses, body and mind. Writer Ed Yong explains in his book An Immense World, this is called umwelt; how the world is experienced by a particular organism. Our human umwelt is led by our senses and sight is our strongest. Hard then to imagine how a roe deer, with its huge fluffy ears and big button nose experiences the world more by sound and scent as well as sight, able to hear or smell our approach from further away. That forcefield of distance is likely led more by their ears and nose than it is seeing us. I’ve noticed their ears aim in my direction long before they lift their head to look and sniff at me, deciding if I’m too close or not.

There are four ears directed at me in the grass, and the two European roe deer stand up alert, their distinctive white patch on the rears visible. One has a single antler, a male buck in the process of shedding them, as they do each winter. New antlers will already be growing beneath, downy like felt through winter, a layer rubbed off to reveal the wooden crown for rutting in spring. Roe deer antlers are quite small and vertical compared to other deer, though they do grow larger as the males age.

They see it’s me, the same human that stands watching them, saying ‘hello deer’, asking them to trust me, projecting that they’re safe here. And they know I’m far enough away, slowly walking the fence line maintaining their forcefield of distance. We walk in an opposing circle to one another. I don’t want to disturb them too much, I’ll only go so far before retreating to leave them to it. Then, I spot a third koala face on the other side of the field looking to the elders to decide what to do. Quite far away but I can tell it’s the younger of the three. Around our farm they are always in a group of three in winter. I suspect the female, their fawn from the summer now almost fully grown who will start their own journey next summer, and a buck. Occasionally there might be a second buck, slightly further out of the group’s orbit.

According to the Wildlife Trusts, roe deer mate and give birth in the summer, and bucks are said to be solitary, but I see them on their own as much as hanging out with females like this for months on end.

Logically I know the deer are likely to be different each year but their presence feels the same. A connection I feel when alongside all nature that’s so powerful, so built in to our humanity, everything else pales by comparison. And yet, that is lost to so many, or I hope, still buried deep within.

I’m reminded of our first summer on the farm, when walking through the meadow, I saw in front of me the classic white dots on rusty-brown fur of a newly born fawn. Breathing gently, not looking, to hide from my approach, I had stepped too far into their world. As quickly and quietly as possible I stepped away, not seeing their mother, on which they are dependent for milk for the first 2 - 3 months, knowing they would be watching me, with eyes, ears and nose.

I love the roe deer on our farm, they are a challenge in our garden, and especially with our vegetables, but it’s easy to live alongside these gentle beings with the right choice of plants and an occasional barrier. All my life I’ve dreamt of growing up, of owning a garden and seeing a deer emerging out of the woods to step into it. I have to remind myself regularly, I’m no longer dreaming.

If you’d like to see roe deer or any deer, head to large woodland with meadows and grasslands nearby. You’re bound to spot some in the open around dawn and dusk, and increasingly, out in the daytime too. Roe deer are found all over the UK and are very common. In Calder Valley they can be spotted all over the place, if you go for a long walk, you are bound to see them.

Two leaves tumbleweed down our lane in a peculiar way. I don’t know what draws my eyes to them in particular, the odd movement I guess. Then it hits me.

“What’s that, is it two rats fighting?!” I say to Chris as I slow the car to a halt. As I spoke, I already felt hope switch on inside me that this could be our first in-person sighting of a live mustelid on our farm. I’d been hoping since moving here three and a half years ago. So far I’ve seen two weasels scurry across moorland roads on the tops, and a dead stoat near the farm.

We stare.

“I’m getting out for a closer look,” Chris says excitedly and I say too abruptly, “don’t you’ll scare them off!” Regretting the way it came out straight away, too snappy and not calmly instructional.

I never mean to do it, least of all when Chris is excited about wildlife, but my urgency at preventing them running away made it come out too sharp. “I just mean, they’ll probably run away if you go near them,” I try to recover but Chris is downbeat from being scolded.

While the scrapping animals clearly aren’t bothered by the car, I instinctively know at the first sight of a human so close - barely 5 metres away - they’ll run away.

Then it becomes clear, yes, one is a weasel. Smaller than the rat it’s attacking, and I check, a short tail that’s completely brown. No sign of the distinctively black bushy end of a stoat. It could only be one of the two given its small size.

Through the windscreen a full on David Attenborough scenario unfolds in minute scale. Chris and I taking photos and videos on our phones.

Weasels are the smallest carnivorous animal in the UK, if you exclude insects. They are part of the mustelid family, or Mustelidae if you want to be posh, or more accurately, scientific. In the UK mustelids include stoat, mink (which were released into the wild from North America), ferret (also released), polecat, pine martin, badger and otter. Increasing in size in that order.

I’ve been getting to know mustelids well over the last few years, not least from my recent trip to see the largest in Scotland, otters on the Isle of Mull. I find mustelids funny mammals, they look stretched, except perhaps badgers which are more rotund. They’re almost cartoon-like with their long bodies and tiny legs, a cross between a sausage dog and a mouse.

Most mustelids are carnivores, though badgers are omnivorous, also eating berries and other plants, and otters largely eat fish and crustaceans.

Our little friend in front of us is demonstrating how ferocious a carnivore a weasel really is. Tiny in size, smaller than the large rat, about 20cm long, it has a tight grip of the rat’s neck and is tussling and tumbling.

Over the last few years on the farm I’ve grown quite fond of rats, from a distance. They’re quite sweet looking things out here, with clear brown fur and white fluffy tummies, they tend to keep themselves to themselves. I feel sorry for the rat because, although it’s giving as good as it can get, I already know who will win.

Weasels are built to kill. Their chestnut brown, slimline physique allows it to speedily weave around the rat in a snakelike way. Pint-sized predator.

Its final bite finds its mark, clamping to the back of the rat’s neck and the rolling pair stop. The rat giving a few last active kicks in vain.

Something about this moment, which I’m used to seeing on TV with lions on antelope, comes with a kindness, despite the reality of what’s happening. It’s not the first time I’ve looked at a mammal killing its prey in this way that I’ve thought there is something respectful about this necessity of the predator’s life. Hugging the prey tightly in its furry paws, slow and gentle. There is no ripping or cutting, that comes later.

The rat gives a last, soft brush of its hind leg and the weasel lets go, standing up. It knew from experience, the very moment life left the rat. I spotted it too.

A lurch of sadness hits me for the rat. Its eyes closed, peaceful. It doesn’t look at all how rats have been portrayed throughout my life.

It is true that rats can be a problem for humans, but where we live we see nature has its own controls, if we’d only stop killing them too.

The weasel turns and scurries to look up at our car, now it’s back in the room from the fight. A beautiful little mammal, how lucky we are to see it so close. It returns to the rat at speed, dragging it to the grassy verge, demonstrating its strength. Licking blood from the death wound at a fast-forward pace.

Suddenly the engine of our car jumps on, as it’s prone to do after sitting idle, and the weasel vanishes into the grass in the blink of an eye. “Go round now and leave it to it,” Chris says and we seize the moment to slowly drive round the rat. I run in to grab my proper camera, “are you coming too?” I try to encourage Chris back out now we’re further away, I hate that I might have discouraged him from enjoying wildlife.

As we tip toe back up for another glimpse, the weasel is back, dragging the rat, but clocks us even from the greater distance of 40m or so, quickly running off with its prize.

I managed to capture a few close ups of the weasel and the dead rat with my zoom lens but, while it’s not at all gory, I decided to spare you in this newsletter.

p.s. a reminder that this coming Monday 21 October at 7.00pm, I’m hosting an online session about wildflowers including 10 new fantastic plants to grow in your garden. To book and for full details, please visit this page. Paid subscribers to this newsletter can attend for free and instructions will be sent on Monday morning. Can’t wait to see you!

Last year Chris and I went to visit puffins up close in Wales and I loved that experience so much, I promised myself to visit one new wild animal each year. This year I was influenced by my wildlife expert friends Hannah Lawson and Helen Corney, who are also fantastic local artists. Hannah’s artwork was being exhibited in our local post office and, sitting there looking at her beautiful maps of Scotland with wildlife painted on them, planted the seed in my head. I would go looking for something fluffy and cute: baby otters.

Otters are a UK conservation success story. They were on the brink of extinction in this country toward the end of the last millennium due to significant human reduction of their habitat, overhunting and pollution in rivers from lethal pesticide run-off from farms. Conservationists and politicians stepped in to ban the most harmful pesticides, cleaning up our rivers enough to help fish and other animals survive (not that you’d know it today with the sewage problem!)

Today otter numbers are slowly increasing and they can be found in every part of the UK, mainly living in fresh water rivers. Around other parts of the world they remain among the most threatened due to shrinking numbers, largely due to destruction of their habitat for farmland and towns.

They have also adapted to live in the sea on the coast, living close enough to fresh water to wash the salt build up off their fur regularly. On Hannah’s artwork was the name of a place I know well from staying there numerous times as a child, the Isle of Mull off the west coast, part of the inner Hebrides.

Chris busy with work, I set off on a mission to find these fuzzballs.

You can see otters all over the UK but it’s slightly easier to spot them along coastlines where they stand out against the water. Hannah and Helen had told me they’d seen loads of otters on Mull, and lots of sources online say the same thing. They inhabit every square mile of the island’s coast.

I suspect otters fall into the category of animal that people see all the time on the off chance when they live somewhere, but remain elusive for people like me dropping in for a short period of time hoping to spot one.

I’d read to look from a distance at low-tide among the seaweed where they like to rummage around for crabs and fish sheltering in the water. Otters are largely nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk, thanks for the word Helen!) but on the coast can be spotted at any time of day wandering about.

So, for the first few days of my trip, I visited different beaches, lochs and coastal spots that looked like good otter habitat. Hanging around in the fascinating, if slippery, seaweed for hours on end, trying to be as still as possible.

No luck. On one beach I thought I’d struck lucky when I saw the unmistakable scamper of a mustelid, silhouetted against the setting sun. Looking closer on my camera however, no, it was a mink! An introduced species that is causing issues for other wildlife by using the resources they need. I didn’t expect mink on Mull. Mink are much smaller, furrier and blacker than otters. Otters are chunkier, about the size of a small dog.

Later, telling the owner of the farm cottage I was staying in about my search, she suggested a local spot known to be frequented by otters. I headed down before low tide and after an hour of waiting behind a rock, through my camera lens, yes! There was the shape of an otter for the first time.

I snapped away for a few seconds with my wildlife zoom lens before it ducked away behind the rock. My first otter! Elated to have been so close, to see the brown of its fur, its lighter head, the muscular body and long pointed tail. But, I hadn’t seen it with my eyes, only in the photos. It was too much of a rush, too far away, with the light starting to go.

I held out hope to see more otters, I had a few photos, now I just wanted to see one with my eyes. To witness how they walk and behave, to form a better grasp of their size.

On my last day, I was losing hope, scanning the coast for miles and miles from the south of the island to the main town, Tobermory in the north. Nothing.

I kept looking, pausing in places to get out of the car, to walk, take in the scenery and to scan the seaweed covered rocks for the dark movement.

When searching for wildlife, be it animal or plant, I’ve learnt that it can be a needle in a haystack. You can hope for a chance encounter, and they do happen, but for real success you have to do your research. Learn about the right habitats, narrow the location down. Ask people for recommendations, often these are essential. Though quite often some people will knowingly give you false information, so be careful.

Give yourself time, wildlife is often spotted after an hour or two of sitting or standing calmly observing the landscape and habitat. Allow the wildlife to grow used to your presence, or better, blend into the scenery so they don’t spot you, standing downwind so they can’t smell you - most mammals have a very good sense of smell. Always stay far enough away to not disturb them. They were here first and are more important than a photograph.

Tracking an otter can be done looking for habitat: seaweed, low tide, close to a fresh water source, looking for their 2-3cm paw prints in sand, finding their green poo that smells of jasmine tea. I used all of this knowledge in the final hours of sunlight on my last day on Mull. Ultimately, resorting to my foolproof wildlife tracking technique: spotting a better wildlife photographer.

Driving along the coast, I noticed a photographer standing motionless, poised on the shore with a large wildlife lens like mine pointing at something. In the next second I saw, curled brown fur of two animals sleeping in the warm sunshine a way from the shore on a bed of yellow ochre seaweed. Would I have spotted them myself? I think I probably would, they stood out like two dogs or small seals asleep on a very visible rock. And they were bigger than I expected, more conspicuous and less bothered by our presence than I’d expected. But I’m grateful to that photographer, whoever he was, for drawing my attention.

Pulling in slowly, there they were, about 40-50 metres in front of me. Two otters, which means a mother and her cub, this couldn’t be better. I stayed in the car to not disturb them with noise or motion, it is their home first and foremost. I also had the fear of being ‘that person’ who scares them away. Thankfully my viewpoint was perfect. For the next 45 minutes I sat in silence, watching otters with my own eyes.

After a time, the mother otter shifted over so I could see her face with button nose. Otter eyes are at the top of their head to see above water when swimming, their bodies largely submerged. They are able swimmers, closing their nostrils and ears when underwater looking for food. Their diet consisting primarily of fish and crustaceans, alongside birds, small mammals and some plants.

At one point, the mother seemed to look right at me.

Then, the cub became fidgety, and I recognised the impatience we see in kittens, puppies and children who are waking up first and wanting slower mum and dad to get moving.

It was fun watching them enjoying the warmth of the last sun of the day.

The cub looked slightly larger and darker than the parent, which I believe suggests it is a male. And he soon decided it really was time to wake up.

Lots of yawning, scratching, preening and play fighting happened reminding me of almost every other mammal behaviour.

This allowed me to witness all kinds of details, from the healthiness of their strong sharp teeth able to break open crabs, to the fingernails on their webbed but fingered paws. Heartening, watching two wild animals enjoying life together.

Eventually, when the pup is about a year old, they will each head their own way. For now though, how privileged to share in this moment of playfulness affection between two animals as they lovingly cuddled for warmth and then set about their afternoon.

I’d gone looking for baby otters never really thinking I would be this lucky, seeing just one otter would have been enough. Spending so long in the presence of two wild animals, witnessing their behaviour and natural habitat, well, it doesn’t get better.

This week my partner Chris and I were on holiday in the lovely seaside town of Tenby in Pembrokeshire, on the south west coast of Wales. One of the highlights of this was always going to be the island of Skomer, visiting the seabird colonies, in particular, puffins.

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I love everything about puffins, from the name, their fluffiness, their waddle, to their adorable whirring honk.

Puffins are a red list endangered species in the UK. According to the RSPB there are only 580,000 breeding pairs around our coast and they are declining, largely due to human overfishing where they feed.

On our visit to Skomer, there were 42,513 puffins (how do they count them?) and we were told it is the only colony that is growing in number, whereas the others are declining.

Puffins live in short burrows that they dig out of cliffs near their feeding grounds, we watched as a couple chucked soil out with their feet and then carried big rocks out in their bills. From these burrows they flap their short wings to take off to sea to fish for food, primarily sandeels which live near the surface of the water. They could be seen returning to land with 7 - 8 or so shiny silver sandeels at a time. I loved the way they landed, feet first with a plonk.

As the sandeels breed so close to Skomer island, the puffins have a relatively easy time of it, flying out in the morning to feed their young, called pufflings. The rest of the day is more relaxed for them, as they rest and pop out to feed themselves.

On Skomer there are a number of rare sea birds including the manx shearwater and razorbill. Which we watched from the cliffs but were too far away to take photos. Many of these, including the puffins, leave the island in winter to travel the seas. One fact I didn’t know is that puffin bills shed in winter and look much darker and smaller until breeding season the following summer.

Living for up to 40 years, puffins mate for life at around the age of five. Pairs then raise one puffling per year, working together to look after the egg and baby.

On Skomer, the puffins were extremely friendly toward us, walking and nesting close to the paths, unfazed by our watching. Making it easy to take photos without disrupting them. It reminded me how important it is when we find animals that are happy to cohabit with humans, and how we need to protect that, not exploit it. Who knows how many wild animals would be less wary of us had we not given them reason to be in the past.

On Skomer island, for the few hours we were there it felt like everything was OK in the world. As though the balance between people and wildlife was as it should be. I long for that to be the case everywhere.