This week, Austin is in an epicurean mood, as he reminds us to stop briefly and smell the flowers

I saw a wonderful thing at the weekend. A goldcrest! For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, the goldcrest is a little wren-like wild bird whose distinguishing feature is a bright yellow stripe vertically down its head.

I was sitting in the garden in the glorious weather we’ve been having, and looked up to a cherry tree. I was conscious of movement, and I waited and watched, hoping that whatever bird it was would sit on a twig for long enough to identify. We have a family of long-tailed tits who seem to visit us regularly though I don’t know where their nest is. And I am always on the lookout for my favourite bird, the treecreeper, who is another small brown bird but who habitually crawls spirally round a tree looking for grubs and bugs to eat.

But a goldcrest! Amazing. And one to add to my notebook. I started seeing birds ( I can’t call it birdwatching, as I don’t go out on trips, I don’t have binoculars, and I do have a life) when I had just got married and my wife and I bought a little flat in Busby on the south extremity of Glasgow. Our flat looked out at the back on to a curve in the White Cart river, and at the water’s edge was a small lawned area with some low trees. I used to notice on glancing out the back that there were birds of various types, some of which I could identify but some that were not recognisable. I borrowed a copy of the Observer Book of Birds, and worked out over a little time of regular observation what I was seeing.

As well as the treecreeper ( whose arboreal peregrinations were what had really first caught my attention), I saw wrens, a variety of ducks, grey wagtails, and tits, as well as the more humdrum sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes and magpies. In summer 1985 I even saw a kingfisher – or at least I knew it was that even though all is could see was a luminescent dart of greeny-blue as it needled into the water. One day I was almost aghast as a giant bird – my first heron – landed on the lawn before wading into the river. And perhaps the most awe-inspiring was one early morning I got up and glanced out of the window to see an otter and its two young disporting around in the sunlight – I even wrote into the papers to report it.

Over the years since then I have always kept a weather eye out for birdlife and noted what I have seen when it was something new. In my early legal career it regularly happened that Ross Harper would send assistants to do trials and appearances to other towns – I got Oban quite a lot and Inverness a few times, and found that either on the train or in the car it was possible to widen the range of avian specimens available to see. When out in the back of beyond on the way to, say, Oban, you could stop the car at the side of the road, sit on a rock and watch the birds both on the ground and up high in the sky. I saw buzzards, hawks of various sorts and even an eagle occasionally. And in the countryside there are lapwings, dippers, pied wagtails, pipits, and the odd pheasant and grouse on open ground - sadly you see all too many pheasants lying strewn on the roadside – I suspect they are not too bright, as they seem to make up an inordinate proportion of roadkill beyond Stirling.

Amongst our seasonal birds I find the trio of swallow, swift and martin to be among the most engaging, and each unique in its swept-back jetwing shape and flying patterns. This weekend is the first we have seen them at home, and it was a few swifts and a larger number of martins who graced our airspace with their wheeling and diving.

As I say I am not a proper birdwatcher, but I am enthusiastic enough to be an embarrassment to my family. They know the warning signs – me stopping mid-sentence and gazing upwards to the sky or a tree, and they remain deeply unimpressed when I identify a coal tit or a thrush in the branches.

I guess it is one of those odd things – putting to one side the larger questions of environment and preservation of nature, I just find it uplifting to see new and different species of birds, and marvel at their livery and lives. My goldcrest was a revelation. I was sure it was a wren while it flitted about the tree branches, though something about its motion was not right. The goldcrest has a capacity almost to hover like a hummingbird for a few seconds before darting away. But it was only after watching it for a few minutes that the little thing settled for long enough and with its head turned to me that I was able to see the flash of pale yellow, to my great excitement.

Well, that’s it this week. Not life or death, and certainly not anything as important as Britain’s Got talent, not even Kenny MacAskill in danger of having his collar felt for personally unlocking the gate to allow open prisoner The Hawk out to join his, and my, feathered friends.

Just the earthly delight of soaring creatures who are not bound to a desk and a computer screen. And how much better I feel at the start of the week for having glimpsed this dash of gold.

Austin