One of the most delightful ways of indulging with the natural world with spring’s awakening is to go ‘a-skylarking’ on a sunny afternoon in Richmond Park and Bushy Park.

For me, it’s watching and listen to up to three males ascending and singing their beautiful silvery songs lasting up to four minutes before parachuting back down into the grassland to run to their nests. What larks!

We may also be fortunate to hear little owls uttering their mewing calls in woodland margins while great spotted woodpeckers drum on hollow branches.

With luck we may see and hear meadow pipits singing during a short vertical song flight. Bumbbees buzz and occasional brimstone butterflies flutter by along woodland margins.

Bushy Park is also a hotspot for the smaller sparrow-sized lesser spotted woodpecker while green woodpeckers ‘yaffle’. I watched the three species of woodpecker once in Bushy Park, all flying together into an ancient oak. Very large common carp leap clear of the surface as it is now mid-spawning time.

It is a ghastly thought to realize that in Elizabethan times millions of skylarks were caught and their tongues delivered to Leadenhall Market in the City because people thought that by eating skylark tongues their speaking and singing voices would become clearer!

Also horrific, larks were popular cage birds in those bygone days — but their eyes were burnt out to encourage them to sing better!