I gave up on New Year’s Resolutions some time ago. But this year I have decided to embrace one, in the form of a new five a day challenge. Nothing to do with fruit and vegetables – five species of bird. Identifying five species a day gives a walk a special focus. It’s not at all difficult to reach five (I could probably make it ten) and usually the list is pretty standard: magpie, pigeon and seagull being the most common round here. So that’s three straight away. There’s often blackbirds, blue-tits, great-tits, or chaffinch and there’s a place I walk where I can almost rely on seeing a flock of bullfinch. This afternoon I saw a beautifully delicate speckled thrush. Of course, there are always rooks and jackdaws. And yesterday to my delight I spotted a pair of jays in the woods. Beside a hedgerow in the park I often spot a robin and a wren. The trouble with this new 5 a day challenge is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of ticking species off without really looking, which defeats the object. So that is the crucial second part of the daily challenge. I can’t count them unless I watch them for a bit and make an observation – the glide and wobble of a sea-gull, lit up rosily by the dawn, or the butterfly dance of two blue-tits through the air. I am even beginning to recognise individuals – there are two robins in the hedge, one fatter than the other, one redder. So, I keep stopping and gawping into bushes or up trees or into the sky, which puzzles Eddie, who pants and tugs beside me like a nagging part of myself saying, ‘Hurry up, get back to work.’  But, as I tell him, the walk is part of my work, and making observations and properly focussing is part of the process of writing. It’s key to the process and it is also truly life-enhancing.