LIFE ON EARTH (IN HAMPSHIRE)

Gilbert White turned the exploration of his local wildlife into Attenborough-class drama.

and that was that. Shame. It would have been nice to show them.

But between them – butterfly, girl, father – they sparked a journey that took me from my doorstep to the furthest reaches of Britain.

Intrigued by those different reactions – my enthusiasm, her curiosity, his obliviousness – I set about exploring our relationship with the natural world. My own experience told me it was all too easy to shamble through life with the barest nod towards it, but I also knew that when my interest in birds resurfaced a decade ago, my life was immeasurably enhanced.

But what about everyone else? Those dog-lovers, sun-strollers, buggy-pushers and grassloungers I saw out and about – were they enthusiastic? Curious? Oblivious?

My journey was shaped by some of the great naturalists, whose insatiable curiosity for the natural world inspired my own amateurish fumblings. What united them was an ability to observe, to notice, to find wonder in the apparently mundane. Charles Darwin, logging the habits of earthworms; Gilbert White, monitoring his patch with relentless perspicacity; Anna Atkins, making the first cyanotypes of algae and changing the worlds of photography and botany forever. Their achievements weren’t the result of Grand Tours, but testament to the endless possibilities of the local.