Last week it was the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust's Big Farmland Bird Count, which started five years ago; now about 1000 farms around the UK take half an hour to participate. Similarly in January half a million people took part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. These are exciting citizen science initiatives, engaging people with birds that surround them every day at home and work, and involving them in data collection that is potentially very valuable to conservationists.
 
For the fifth February running we walk round the same two fields at Broadwell on the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire border. I am joined by Doug, the new farm manager, and Annabel, one of the owners. The fields are typical of the area, one arable and one pasture, bordered by the village, a lane, a stream and an old fishpond, with mature hedges and a game strip. I shut my eyes and call out what I can hear-greenfinches on song flight, a chaffinch by the pond, a couple of robins and a dunnock, a mewing buzzard, rooks at their nests and jackdaws around the church tower. Annabel has logged seven species on her clipboard before we see a bird. As usual we choose a time when the forecast is mostly clear, but soon the wind gets up, the sky darkens, hoods go up and we are in the middle of the day's only squall. As we reach the game strip birds are sheltering silently, and the next few minutes of our half hour produce only a few wind-blown rooks and a blackbird cackling its alarm. It soon blows over and small groups of linnets, chaffinches and yellowhammers spurt up into the hedge in front of us. A couple of egrets fly into the grass field, and a red kite slowly flies across it; now common birds, thirty years ago scarcely any farm in the country would have hosted either. The sun peeps through and skylarks start to sing - like many specialist farmland birds their fortunes have gone the other way.

If you like the idea of participating, the British Trust for Ornithology runs valuable volunteer surveys. These feed into E-bird, is a global project run by Cornell Lab of Ornithology that provides data for many conservation initiatives. You don't need to be perfect to contribute; the more data they have the easier it is to identify mistakes. And there is help: Cornell's free photo identification app Merlin produces extraordinary results even with European birds. Apps to identify bird vocalizations are some way behind-birds do not always sing identical songs so it's not like Shazam. Planet Birdsong is working to produce mobile based games that address this-we'll be carrying out more trials at The Wild Watch this spring. 

Everyone marvels at stunning photos and videos of murmurations, the evening pyrotechnics of starlings gathering to roost. People flock to see them at Brighton Pier, Minsmere, Gretna Green and Avalon marshes. In Denmark murmurations can involve a million birds.
We admire these huge gatherings from a distance; however this week on a byroad in Lancashire I found myself bang in the middle of a feeding flock of at least 10,000 starlings. With my new found enthusiasm for social media, I rummaged for my i-pad, wound the windows down and snapped away; birds were everywhere, birdshit covered the car, and quite a bit splashed the upholstery inside. Every shot was different and interesting; I narrowed down to a dozen or so and posted a gallery on facebook. In case you saw them I've uploaded different ones here. 

​My first blogpost has had 405 views, which is encouraging, and one comment, from my friend Thomas Urquhart in Maine, who asks "What are you actually doing?!" I'll try to explain:

I was invited to Eilean Shona (see the last blog) by the owner, Vanessa Branson, to survey the birdlife and look into running some birdsong activities there. The quid pro quo for the trip was that while I was there I would post regularly on social media. She wanted three instagram posts per day. This didn't sound like me; I've always enjoyed other people's snaps, but felt I was missing the moment if I was stuck behind the lens. However, I wandered around the island with my i-pad and posted pictures of the constantly changing colours; to my surprise I enjoyed it.

After leaving the island I kept posting, but felt the need to include pictures of birds. To get acceptable images with i-pad you have to get within a couple of feet of your quarry. I picked an inquisitive looking nuthatch as my first target. I moved some garden furniture out of the way and pulled my car up against the fence near the bird feeder to serve as a hide. I sat motionless, window open, back twisted, i-pad raised for action, and waited for the bird to pluck up courage to take a sunflower seed eighteen inches away from me. Time passed. Through the corner of my eye I could see the nuthatch watching the car from bushes a few metres up the fence, so any sudden movement would be fatal. At first other birds kept their distance, but eventually coal tits started to flit to the feeder, each visit only lasting a second or two; soon after came blue tits, then after much nervous chattering and whirring of wings, great tits. I photographed them all. After 45 minutes of expectant discomfort (for both of us I suspect), the nuthatch flew in.

I love the idea that anyone with a mobile phone and a little patience can take decent photos of birds. People fear that devices take us away from the natural world, but we can use them to enhance our relationship with it. Birdsong is very hard for humans to understand without some help; that is the point of the Planet Birdsong initiative. On Shona we talked about the pressure for "digital detox" to be the selling point for recreational experience of the wild; yet it can be just as transformative to slow down and immerse ourselves in the myriad details of nature that escape us in our busy everyday routines, using all of the wonderful resources now available to us. For me the key is for each of us to develop the right dialogue between our own intelligence and AI.
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What made me start this new blog? Vanessa was hosting a writing retreat while I was there. Twice a week writers would emerge from their far-flung cottages to share extracts from their latest work. A skinny-dipping cranial osteopath, with an infectious sense of new-found freedom now that her children are grown up, read enigmatic tales about unresolved family mysteries; a Hong Kong Banker's ex-wife told stories about Hong Kong Bankers' wives, extolling the joys of extreme plastic surgery (she's spending a whole month in a remote cottage by the sea without electricity- it's heroic!); Vanessa read movingly from her forthcoming memoirs. All I came up with was a little piece for the Eilean Shona visitors' pack, which became last week's blog; however I caught the storytelling bug so now I'll post a story about birds once a week.

I'm cosily installed by the fire in a cottage on Eilean Shona off Ardnamurchan, a 2000 acre island where I am on a winter retreat. I look out over the waters of the South Channel of Loch Moidart towards the imposing 14th century ruin of Castle Tioram. This panorama is the backdrop for a steady stream of avian comings and goings; through binoculars I sometimes see a flock of rock doves, wild cousins of the feral pigeons found in cities, wheeling around the ramparts of the castle; on the water are small parties of red breasted-mergansers, raffish males leading dowdy females, sometimes a solitary goldeneye, once a male eider; occasionally a peregrine dashes across, hoping to surprise a dove or a duck. Jet-black shags dive, then fly off to dry their wings on the rocks. One afternoon a handsome great northern diver worked its way along the channel, spending almost as much time under water as on it. In the evenings the imposing form of the resident juvenile sea eagle (they are sometimes known as flying barn doors) wings its way across on its way to roost. The constantly changing wave patterns occasionally break to reveal the rounded head of a passing otter. Angular herons from a nearby heronry stalk the shallows, keeping an eye open for sea eagles, who regard them as both food and competition.
 
The magnificent 19th century plantations provide refuge for many of the island's small birds. Blue tits are concentrated in a single mobile flock of 100 or so, frequently joined by great tits, goldcrests, coal tits (already breaking occasionally into their see-saw song); a variety of other birds seem to tag along loosely for security, chaffinches, blackbirds, song thrushes, a few redwings from Scandinavia. Inquisitive robins fly over to investigate you, dunnocks and wrens skulk in the undergrowth; jays announce your arrival with raucous screeches in the gnarled oaks. There are other, more elusive flocks around-it is worth getting to know the wheezing call of siskins and the rattling of redpolls if you want to see them. Once over the wind I heard the "chup-chup-chup"s of a group of crossbills, but could not locate them. The island's resident pairs of great-spotted woodpeckers are most easily found by following their their far-carrying "tchick".
 
On walks there have been periods of sunlit stillness, the air full of the exuberant piping of oystercatchers and the mournful song of curlews, punctuated by the deep croaking of ravens; at other times the wind blows up and it is hard to imagine how birds can survive-we almost tripped over an unfortunate heron which seemed to be giving up the struggle. At this time of year there are few birds on the windswept tops, just a few wisps of meadow pipits and the odd woodcock, for whom even when it blows a gale the west coast is mild compared to their frozen breeding grounds in Russia. Large numbers fly over the North Sea on full moons in November and December, and slowly work their way westwards in search of milder air. There has been a big freeze inland while I am here, and today on a path through boggy woodland I put up a dozen woodcock, where last week there were none. When I emerged into the open the young sea eagle flew straight over my head, checking me out and causing the hinds on the hill to freeze.
 
Eilean Shona's birds do not always give themselves up easily; however, over time the island gives up its secrets, and after almost two weeks I am still adding a new bird or two to my list nearly every day.