The late winter light illuminates the lichens on the spire of the stained sandstone steeple. A single drifting white feather tells me we arrived too late. Tracing its trajectory in reverse, I find the peregrine tucked into a niche by the belfry, perched on a strut that holds a floodlight over the graveyard. The falcon, a small and well-fed tercel, has been here since the turn of the year, gargoyling the nooks and ledges of the church, haunting the town’s pigeons. The ground between the headstones is decorated with their spent feathers. Even on its high perch, sated, the peregrine possesses an attention-grabbing presence. It leans forward, excretes and preens its pale breast feathers that stand out in the sun against the dark stone. I try to slip binoculars from my pocket but I hear you grizzle. I take the hint. I am getting used to binoculars no longer hanging around my neck. More precious cargo now rests against my chest. I am growing used to the reduced horizons. These are strange but brilliant days, keen with beauty after a winter shrunk to the half-lit four rooms of our flat, when the world disappeared in a blur of caffeine and urgent needs and next-day deliveries. I brought you here because I want you to have this, the naturalist’s life: the gift of being distracted by what is happening outside and knowing what that means. But you, my four-month-old daughter, don’t know this yet. Books detail the way that your eyes began, knowing only a world of limited colours, a horizon of 30cm and no focus. Over your first year this improves until vision is completely developed, meaning that day by slow day the sunsets in your world get more vivid, your outlook more expansive, more real in ways I can’t see or imagine. I can’t wait to see you seeing a bird for the first time, whether peregrine or pigeon. All I keep coming back to are two sentences that feel like a prayer. There is so much beauty in this world. You have it all to come.