Now here’s the thing: is feeding blackberries to geese akin to giving sweets to children … before lunch?

I restore equilibrium by wandering through a wetland & wild fowl oasis and recently have discovered geese to be fiends for the engorged fruit which have so benefitted from the recent, well-timed rain. Now it’s my new best friend … the occupation of communing with these elegant, voluble yet gentle birds by virtue of being a conduit of blackberry from bush to beak.

They’re quick on the uptake too. Never having shown the slightest interest in the mile-long mangrove of berry-laden prickles, within five minutes of watching the picking before consuming, long necks were straining to reach the very same berry-laden boughs.

Teal, swan and egret all turn up their beaks. Why? [I’d have liked to see if the woodpeckers were equally averse but they’ve not been seen since a rather intense – and distressingly public – mating collision in late May. Guess they felt at sea among watery peers.]

The restorative nature of … nature infuses peacefulness at the cellular level, seems to me. The exercise of getting there builds the appetite for spreading troubles over rippling waters and sploosh, they’re gone. Gazing on peacefulness grows resilience to the stressed conditions which seem to shape our lives. Simple, accessible and not improper at all.