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This week I glimpsed the electrifying blue flash of a kingfisher on the banks of my local river. “Wow!” was all I could say. And, “Thank you.” A glimpse of a wild bird like that can lift and transport us to another world. To their world, in which for a few tantalising moments we become the guest. We’re not likely to see a kingfisher in our gardens this weekend, but that’s where the RSPB is asking us to focus for the Big Garden Bird Watch, the country’s largest citizen- science project - and there’ll be plenty of riches to discover within the less flashy species we encounter there. The idea is to give one hour to watch and count the different birds that grace our own gardens - and last year about 700,000 of us took part, counting 1.7 million birds, many species of which are in serious decline, like the song thrush. It’s not just a helpful thing to do, it’s a mindful, and soulful, opportunity to put our phones down and calmly bring our loving attention back to the natural world; to be absorbed in the watching and waiting itself; to wonder afresh at the song of a thrush, or the proximity of a robin, or the colours of a blue tit. And such attention seems to matter - certainly it did to Jesus, whose Sermon on the Mount includes that famous line, “Look at the birds of the air ... free and unfettered ... careless in the care of God,” as one version puts it. It all comes down to this, says John Stott, the Anglican theologian: “Watch birds!” It’s a spiritual practice too, then; one he calls “orni-theology” because there’s so much we can learn about the nature of God’s ‘kingdom’ - not least that even the so-called least, the sparrows, are beloved by their Creator. “Not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s knowing,” says Jesus. Or as the song puts it so movingly, “His eye is on the sparrow (and I know he watches me).” This first principle of this kingdom, then, seems to be that it includes everything and everyone - it’s one whole ecology of love, to the extent that the fall of one sparrow is a significant event. And that’s a reminder for me not just to put the bird seed out, and help with the crucial research this weekend into our British species, but to stay connected with my fellow creatures, and to sense my place, my role as guest within this different world of theirs and God’s. Starting in my own back garden.