The art of LARKING

When I was small, my mother took me on nature walks. We wandered companionably through the fields and along the hedgerows that made up our farm, looking and collecting.

We searched for unusual and interesting things and collected objects that were out of the ordinary: unusual pebbles, sloughed snake skins, eggshells discarded by hatchlings, oak galls, feathers and, once, the bright green head of an escaped budgerigar that had been