During the past year, many people have been comforting themselves by spending time enjoying the natural world when taking daily exercise walks in local green spaces, something they may not have had time to do before.

Even in winter there is so much to see and discover and with spring almost upon us, there will be many more opportunities to connect with nature which an increasing number of people are doing to ease those lockdown blues.

We can look forward to blossom and birdsong, early butterflies, wild flowers and bees and frogspawn to name but a few delights.

For many weeks I have been enjoying the bird life in Wimbledon park where a large expanse of grassland has been partially waterlogged due to constant rain.

Several hundred black headed gulls have been foraging on the grass picking up worms from the saturated surface.

From time to time a dog will run at the birds which take off en masse, fly around for a few minutes before landing again.

As many gulls also alight on the adjacent lake where a bird feeding station is in place attracting them as well as greylag and Canada geese, mallard and hundreds of squabbling coots. Quite a cheery spectacle.

Goldfinches are numerous this year and following the recent cold spell spend much of the day on my garden feeders while in Morden Hall park its good to see some little egrets spending the winter there.