Hello and welcome to "simply noticing".

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I began to collect the material (sound recordings, photos and videos) for this website during the lockdown in spring 2020. Like many of us during that extraordinary time, the natural world just beyond my front door became more vivid and more important than ever before.

 

Venturing out in the early morning I relished the spring birdsong resonant against the silence that lockdown brought. Walking more slowly than normal, I noticed the extraordinary variety in the unfolding leaves. And standing still, I go to watch the heron drinking delicately or deftly snatching fish from small lake at the end of our road.

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I "inherited" my love of the natural world, and a lifelong habit of feeding birds, from my adopted mother who had grown up in a small village in Hampshire. My childhood memories are full of visits to the New Forest, the sea and the western end of the South Downs. Now living in Sussex, I still find great delight in the wetlands, woods, sea and downs that surround us.

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I am painfully aware of the losses in biodiversity during my lifetime but I still find much to delight in. I created this website to share a little of what I have found to love and celebrate immediately around me. May this beauty inspire us all to work to protect and nurture some small patch of ground near us.

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John Webber, Lewes