To see or not to see. That is the question

We're (Boom the terrier and I) are sitting on a log in a small wood on the southern flank of Congham Hill on the coastal path behind East Runton, Norfolk. It's breakfast time and the morning chorus of bird song in full swing. Robin, wren, chaffinch, chiffchaff, blue tit, blackcap and from the fields nearby crow, pheasant and jackdaw. All familiar songs and singers. I have my phone listening for anything new or out of the ordinary. There's nothing, but even if it did, my chances of a sighting are decreasing by the day as the trees become clothed in leaves. The oaks are now bathed in lime green. Just the ashes yet to join the party.

I famously can't sing, but if I was a bird, I'd like to sing like a blackcap. Loud and confident streams of notes. For a long time, I would hear blackcap singing - or more often issuing its alarm call like two pebbles being knocked together - from a dense bramble thicket and assign it to the 'easy to hear, but difficult to see' category of birds (of which Cetti's Warbler must be the prime example). However, this year something is in the air and male Blackcaps are giving it large from prominent perches in the hedgerow. Just long enough for a chorus, before moving on as if for an urgent appointment.

The Merlin bird app is very good and seems to have become very popular. However, if I had a pound for every time it thinks it has heard something (it is not infallible) and I can't hear or see it, I'd be considerably better off than I am. I'm trying to train myself to look up more and look down at the screen less. Ideally you want to sight a bird and then use the app as confirmation of what you've seen. Of course, whilst that's very good in theory, I'm starting to think that my chances of spotting a goldcrest or treecreeper without help are very limited. The app seems to think it's easy.

The best sightings are always something you see when you are not looking and don't expect it. Owls are great for a surprise sighting. Today it was the turnstones on West Runton beach. Seemingly not fazed by sharing the rock pools at low tide with a small black terrier. Petite. Inconspicuous. Rootling about on the sea's edge. Conducting their business while the herring gulls and a lone cormorant sit head to wind whilst looking on from a seaweed clothed groyne, now standing proud from the waves.

I keep a list of what I've seen - an annual list, not a life list so I can simply compare year on year. Spotting and learning about birds shouldn't be a competition. For me it just makes being out and about whether in the Norfolk woods, on the heath or next to the sea that much more interesting. And if you do make the effort, you'll be surprised at what you do see. It could be a deer, a fox, a badger or what Boom and I happened upon a few days ago. An adder sunbathing in the morning in the middle of the footpath. Fortunately, I saw him before the dog and he slithered away into the undergrowth.

However, even if you don't see a thing, on a spring morning, there's no finer place to stop and sit awhile than a wood awash with bluebells and just drink in the sounds and the view.