February through to May is just about our busiest and most work-intensive time of year. We’re all out from dawn to dusk almost every single day, covering (almost entirely on foot) as many miles as we can physically manage in as wide a range of habitats as possible, including ancient mixed, coniferous and deciduous woodland, farmland, moorland, coastal, wetland, flood plain, mountain and urban.We take thousands of photographs, scribble countless notes, make little marks on maps, draw macabre diagrams, collect root, stem, bark, soil, sand and water samples plus a host of other things far too numerous to mention, but all of which have to be thought about, located, acquired, itemised, listed, categorised, uploaded, edited, downloaded, batched and transported ready for analysis by our laboratory team in France.It’s as much about the ‘feel’ of things out there in the countryside as anything, so reports have to be written on a daily basis. It’s also about detecting as many of the thousands of subtle changes taking place in the Natural World as possible. We’re even required to record local changes in the weather, such as sudden rises or falls in temperature and/or air pressure or alterations in wind speed and direction.

Basically, we record and collate as much of just about everything and anything we come across as is humanly possible.We’re even out and about two or three nights a week as well, equipped with all manner of things, such as military spec NVE, Bat detectors and home-made Moth traps….and all because that’s when an entirely different wildlife shift takes over, one that we can’t afford to ignore.Tess meanwhile, will only accompany me every other day for the time being because she’s hardly more than five months old and fifteen to twenty miles a day is too much for her physically just yet and, although walking is low impact and I’m not stupid enough to encourage her to tear around after a stick, a ball or a frisbee while she’s still so young and her joints are still growing and developing, I don’t want to be the cause of her having joint problems in later life, especially in the hips.

So, by the time we get to May, we’re all pretty much kn*ckered, but that’s also when I happen to begin my annual round of Skylark walks!