Just before Christmas, the RSPB did me the most amazing favour. I work out of the South East regional office (from which I help set up new nature reserves - this gardening lark is my hobby), and in November the RSPB moved to a new office.
For the RSPB, it meant that we now have much a more environmentally-friendly building.
For me, it meant that I now have the Pavilion Gardens right opposite. Heaven! I've actually started to take lunch breaks, seduced by the wonders of wildlife in a city centre.
There are Wrens, Dunnocks, Blue Tits and Blackbirds. My favourite Hairy-footed Flower Bees are everywhere at the moment. Plus there are wonderful old flower varieties, and Elms that support an urban population of White-letter Hairstreak butterflies.
But on 23 March, it was a thin, ultra-high seeping coming from some Yew bushes that caught my attention. It was a weedy little noise, the kind that unfortunately many people lose from their hearing range in middle age - I'm clinging to the fact that hearing it was a sign of my continuing youthfulness!. Normally it would signal Goldcrest. But I wondered, just wondered, if it was something even more special.
And when it appeared, flashing its black and white head stripes and bronzy shoulder and golden crown, I knew I was in the presence of a bird with big charisma for its size - the Firecrest.
What a stunner! There are just a couple of hunded or so breeding pairs in the country, mainly summer visitors to the New Forest and other spruce plantations in the south. They also pass through mainly eastern counties on autumn migration, and a few hardy souls winter in the south.
But numbers are on the increase, and with climate change we could see them do increasingly well in the future.
It is Britain's second smallest bird, just behind its much commoner cousin, the Goldcrest, which may well be present in your garden in any large conifer. The Goldcrest shares the think golden crown stripe, but in contrast has none of the headstripes, giving it a blank, almost scared expression on its face.
Note the fine bill, perfectly adapted for picking tiny insects and their eggs and larvae from between conifer needles.
Note my excitement!
Aren't gardens fantastic!