It's happened again: yet another near St Francis of Assis moment as Terry and I trudged through a bitterly cold Hyde Park trying to work out just exactly where in the this 350 acres of park, the resident Tawny Owls call home.

A quest in vain as it ultimately turned out; wherever they were, we were n't.

Still if one door closes, another really does open, and opens wide. We were given what might as well have been the avian equivalent of a cavalry escort. Birds popped up and out of everywhere; like miniature dust storms, whirling through the undergrowth.

Birds of every stripe and colour filled the bushes as we strode through the park. Close enough for them to have eaten out of our hands. They were fearless. It was something almost out of a Disney cartoon where humans and animals chat away; that surreal. 

Even the normally raucous parakeets put a sock in it as they drew nearer to us. So near in fact that either one of us could have made for a very passable Long John Silver with a parrot on his shoulder had we thrown an arm out.

This has happened before at the Barnes Wetland centre where we were virtually shadowed by a roving, darting band of extraordinarily acrobatic long tailed tits for hundreds of yards.

Why is this happening?