Roll out the red carpet, the King is in town...

After a very busy week, please excuse me doing a very visual blog.

You see, my RSPB day-job got kind of hectic this week with the news that the planning application had been withdrawn which would have plonked 5,000 houses all over the best site in the UK for the threatened Nightingale (cheer!). But a new application is apparently threatened (boo!). You can see my thoughts about that here.

The week was made even busier by a day with the wonderful crew at BBC Gardeners World magazine HQ to help judge their Garden of the Year Competition.

So I thought I'd just share the thing that brightened up my day one morning as I looked out of my bedroom window:

If I have ever had any doubts about whether it was worth digging a large pond, right behind my back window, it is moments like these that dispel them forever.

Especially when the King turns around...

How electric is that? It even decide to do some gentle stretching manoeuvres...

And then something you don't often see, a Kingfisher up in a tree...

And by the time it had sat in an apple tree soaking up the rays of the sun, it had spent over two hours in the garden, been the perfect accompaniment to breakfast, and set me up for saving the world!