An Armsfull of Birds by Cara Benson

 

Subtitled 'A Personal Field Guide to Love, Loss and Commitment', this is the story of poet Cara Benson's recovery from addiction, her love of the outdoors, her environmental activism, and her long term love affair with Jon, a fellow recovering addict. 

At the outset I thought this would be very much a misery memoir, which isn't a genre I read. However, I was drawn to this book because of the birds and, though there is a lot of misery (the author has not had an easy life at all), the book is overall hopeful and inspiring, as well as being beautifully written, moving and emotionally honest.

Each chapter opens with a brief quote about an aspect of the lifestyle of a particular species of bird, which somehow reflects the aspect of the author's life covered in the chapter. This brings together human life and the natural world in a distinctive, thought provoking way. 

I was very impressed with the author's strength of character. She turned her back on an abusive relationship, committed to sobriety and took up hiking and then mountaineering, braving some incredibly challenging climbs. Later she, with her sister, nursed her mother through terminal ovarian cancer and had to come to terms not only with her mother's death but with Jon's death by suicide. 

After Jon's death, she moved into an old church surrounded by woodland. She was already an environmental activist, but was pushed into thinking more about what she could personally do about the state of the natural world when one of her neighbours started clearfelling the trees on his land. 

This is a moving meditation on love, grief, recovery and our relationship with the natural world - how we need to look after nature but also how the natural world can help us heal:

"We hit the trail early the next morning. The sky was a crisp blue against the white cover of winter. The evergreens were loaded with perfect clumps of snow and rime ice, and we were out there among
them, not another hiker in sight. We trudged in our snowshoes, the path crunching rhythmically under our feet, two souls fully alive for the adventure that our lives had become. Wasn’t this what we’d both
suffered the indignities of withdrawal and the labor of recovery for— to say a hearty “yes!” to it all, as Joseph Campbell, one of the thinkers I’d begun reading in sobriety, had advised?"

 An Armsfull of Birds by Cara Benson, published (19 May 2026) by Simon and Schuster. 

Disclaimer: I received a free pdf of this book in exchange for an honest review.  

Spring in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens

 We always love walking in Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens at this time of year. The gardens have a large variety of rhodendrons and azaleas that bloom in sequence over Spring. A different selection were in bloom when we visited the gardens in March than were out yesterday. Here are some of the blooms from yesterday

 

We also recorded all the birds we saw for the BTO Birds in Greenspaces Project, which you can get involved with here, if you're in the UK. We were particularly pleased to see this Nuthatch:

We were also delighted to see a good number of Hairy Footed Flower Bees in exactly the same area of the gardens as we had seen them last year. Last year we had only seen females here, but  this year we saw both the brownish males 

and the black females 

 (Thanks to Crafty Green Boyfriend for the photos of the Nuthatch and Bees)

Spring Flowers

 One of the things I love at this time of year is to see all the Spring flowers coming into bloom. 

Lesser Celandines have been blooming for a while, but are now at their best

while the Wood Anemones are just coming into bloom 

 

and the young female cones on the larch trees are halfway towards being fully grown 

I'm fascinated by the development of larch cones and, in 2019 I shared this post showing their development. I've been taking photos of the cones every week this year and will be sharing another post about cone development on my Crafty Green Poet Substack in due course. 
 

Newington Cemetery

 A few years ago, I was employed to carry out wildlife surveys of all of the council managed cemeteries in Edinburgh, a job I really enjoyed. I still try to visit cemeteries whenever I pass. One of my favourites is Newington Cemetery and as I was in the vicinity yesterday, I took a wee wander there. One of the things I love about this cemetery is how it feels like a natural woodland but also it feels well managed, helped by the fact that not too many of the gravestones have been vandalised or pushed over for the sakes of health and safety as is the case in many of our older cemeteries. 

 

There are lots of beautiful trees in this cemetery, including this magnificent cherry

Lots of birds were singing and flying around and I made notes of them all for the BTO's Birds in Greenspaces project which you can join here, if you're in the UK. 

**

This week's Crafty Green Poet Substack post is out now, all about haiku and nature, you can read it here. 
 

RSPB Spotlight - Puffins by Euan Dunn

 

 This is a beautiful book taking a close look at the Atlantic Puffin, familiar to many people who have visited the coastal cliffs of the UK among other countries. Illustrated with a wealth of photos, the book looks at vasrious aspects of the puffin's lifestyle from courtship to raising the chicks, foraging for food and colonail living. There are chapters too on the many threats to the puffin, from ocean pollution to overfishing. 

This is a great book for anyone interested in this very charismatic bird species!  An ideal book to review on 14th April - World Puffin Day. According to 2023’s Seabirds Count, the latest seabird census, 23% of Puffins have been lost from the UK in the past 20 years. They now feature on the Birds of Conservation Concern Red List and are at risk of global extinction.  

RSPB Spotlight Puffins by Euan Dunn, published (2014) by Bloomsbury.  

The Wildlife Trusts recently posted an article about folkloric beliefs about puffins, you can read it here.  

**

I'm delighted to have a haiku in the latest issue of Sense and Sensibility. You can read the whole issue here.  

**

A collage of mine has been included in the University of the West of England, Bristol book art exhibition 'The Mountains are Calling'. You can read about the exhibition here and see the artworks on Instagram here. (I'm not on Instagram so can only see a few of the pictures and mine might not be included yet, but will be there by the end of July). If you're in Bristol you can also see all the artworks on display until the end of July at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol.

Grey Heron

We had a lovely walk along the Water of Leith on Saturday and were very pleased to see two Grey Herons fishing, surprisingly close to each other. Though not so close we could get them both in the same photo! Here's one of them

 

Easter Monday in The Figgate Park

 The weather has been lovely today, certainly nice enough to enjoy an easter Monday walk round Edinburgh's Figgate Park. The willow trees are looking lovely 

 

and the Norway Maple's beautiful flowers are out at the moment, I was lucky to find these ones hanging at a suitable level to take easy photos

There were plenty of birds around, which I have recorded for the Birds in Greenspaces project, but only these Mallards were willing to pose for the camera - the male was being very protective of the female, keeping an eye out while she ate