A call I answered in the office brought one of those stories that proves there is a deep-rooted emotional anchor that binds us with the natural world.
A lady who'd planted some bulbs in her southeast London garden had left the box the bulbs arrived in on a garden seat. When she went to shift it a couple of weeks later she was startled when a robin shot out of the top. Carefully opening the cardboard flaps on top "I looked inside and there were two open beaks and a little egg, beautiful". Those were her words. Personal experiences like this underline our links with wildlife. We cannot help but be impressed, awed and amazed by it.
Most people have had an experience like that of the lady above. I advised to leave them where they were and that the chicks will fledge after a couple of weeks. It's illegal to mess with live nests! The RSPB's doing all it can to increase the odds so that everyone has an equal opportunity to get closer to wildlife, to be awe-struck, jolted out of the ordinary or made to re-examine the world around us. We run what we call Aren't birds brilliant projects across the UK to do just this.
Today the sun's out and the Tate peregrines are incubating! How exciting that we'll have another brood of young peregrines in the heart of London. We think there are now almost seven pairs in the Capital, all on well-monitored sites, but it will be poor Misty and Bert - our Tate peregrines - who will be in the spotlight.
Misty is a great mother and has successfully raised some twenty peregrines in London. First with her old partner, Houdini, and since last year with a younger model who was named Bert by teenager Katie Silva from Hainault. She took part in our Who's your Daddy competition to name the bird and her entry was drawn from hundreds of contributors. We'll be back at the Tate Modern with our telescopes, volunteers and information trailer from 19 July right through to 14 September.
Being able to relate to the world is an important part of being human but it is still not as widely recognised as it should be. I attended a conference on well-being in schools the other day where every aspect of childhood development was discussed. We covered emotional literacy, financial awareness, trust, diet and health. But there was hardly any mention of encouraging young people to enjoy the natural world, to play in it, to explore it and themselves through their interactions with it.....
Sorry, starting to sound like a tree-hugger again, a description often aimed at me from my nine year old daughter. The fact is, that if we can't give primary and secondary school pupils the space, time and encouragement to experience wildlife for themselves, society will be poorer for it. Having access to clean and safe outdoor space should be enshrined in our Human Rights. I'm glad to see it's a topic that is being taken seriously by a number of the candidates running to be Mayor of London. It should be a winning policy, one that will make our Capital an even more amazing place in which to live and work.