After my husband died, the birds started behaving strangely towards me. This was not my imagination; it really happened. On my daily walks, I was startled by how close they came to me – approaching, hopping alongside me and chirping. If there were a lot of them – and if there was no one else around – it felt as if they were accompanying me, maybe trying to convey something. It made me begin to pay much more attention to my natural surroundings than I had before. I discovered the uncomplicated pleasure to be found in a weirdly shaped mushroom, in the steady clicking noise made by gorse bushes when the sun shines on them. I was not skipping through the woods, tra-la-la; I was far too sad. But my need to walk every day – which I have always had – acquired a new and deeper meaning. Over time, I came to see that when you walk in nature ... alone, you become more fully part of the world around you. So, no doubt, I was paying more attention to the birds. But I also think they sensed that there was something wrong with me – I was a wounded creature – and maybe they really were accompanying me. I relate to the natural world differently now that I have learned to sense it as company. It is these moments that have coloured my experience of living alone for the first time in 35 years. Sometimes I imagine my husband laughing and rolling his eyes at how I told everyone that, after he died, the birds started behaving strangely towards me.