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Back to bird-watching last week. A lovely morning for the day arranged for the trip with my bird-watching guide, Tony. Chilly at first but bright sunshine, at least until I got off the train and started along the road to the bus stop. Then it began to warm up and eventually became really hot. 20c the news reported that evening.

If you read our web-pages, you will know that when I started these outings, I put on my dark glasses and unfolded my cane in the station concourse so that I appeared as a blind person at that point and then I walked slowly, using my stick towards the bus stop, half a mile away. I did not then go ‘fully blind’ until I was on the bus and just before my final arrival point where Tony would meet me. Last year, I became braver and went ‘blind’ sooner, and I now change from my blind looking glasses, those with the unpainted lenses, into the black-painted fully blinding glasses, before I even reach the bus stop.

Once out of the station, I turn right and walk along, passing a round-about on the same side, after which I cross the rather busy road and carry on walking out of the town. Then, at a secluded spot along there, I do change to my fully blinding glasses and then continue, using my stick and other senses to find my way along to the bus stop. Here I nearly always get an offer of help, it being close to a girls school with either staff or pupils waiting for the same bus. In fact, I have heard that people there and on the bus assume I am connected with the school in some way. I don’t contradict them.

As I get on and pay the driver, I ask that he gives me a shout when I get to my destination, I can sense that the bus is usually fairly empty by then. This week, the driver stopped the bus, came to where I was seated and helped me right off the bus, handing me over (probably with a sigh of relief!) to the waiting Tony. I get a curious sensation on these mornings nowadays that I become a different person, albeit a blind bird enthusiast!

Anyway, all went well. I heard first and Tony then saw, a Cetti’s Warbler. He would have missed it otherwise, he said. When I told him that it was a recent arrival in England and had become a summer breeding visitor, a sign of global warming perhaps, and that it was named after an Italian monk who first identified it as a separate species, he was quite impressed and said he would treat me to lunch. Which he did! – before putting me back onto the bus homewards.