Kat and Rick are well suited for each other in many ways. For one, they are collectors. Before college, Katie collected all the Mandy books and, later, all the Star Trek films and TV series.

Rick has collected planes, trains, and small woodland animals.

Together they have collected the figurines of more than 140 birds of the British Isles which are on display in their living room. In fact, while typing this post, eBay notified Rick that he has purchased 434 birds in just the past four years.

Rick began his collection about 25 years ago, just before meeting Kat online. After joining him in 2003, they began collecting together.

When he was five years old, Rick’s paternal grandmother took him on long walks through the Lancashire countryside, naming each bird and butterfly, tree and flower. Thus began Rick’s lifelong love and knowledge of all things natural.

As a professional photographer, Rick set a goal of photographing all the birds of the British Isles. He achieved that goal with thousands of photos, culminating with the figurine collection. His knowledge of them is encyclopedic.

In the first few days of my six-month visit, I asked Rick, “What bird is making that sound?” It was a melodic, sweet whoo- whoooo-who. “Oh, that’s the wood pigeon,” he replied. “They used to live in the country. But now that the cities are spreading so far into the country, they live in our gardens.”

The wood pigeon is the only bird that feeds its young with milk. It’s not the liquid milk of mammals. It’s partly digested food, paste-like, in its crop. The young stick their little beaks into the parent pigeon’s mouth to get the “milk.”

One bird that always seems to draw excitement is the robin red-breast. This is the most recent fact that Rick gave me about this bird. “The male robin red breast is the only English songbird to sing year-round, even throughout the cold, dark winter, to protect its territory. Other birds sing only during their mating seasons.”

Even though a subject of gentle, romantic poetry, the robin is surprisingly ferocious when protecting its own territory. It will attack anything that looks like another male robin from a statue of a robin to a patch of red cloth. They build their nests not only in trees and shrubs but in old teapots and upturned shoes,

In December the first restaurant that we went to was Red Kite. Of course, I thought that the name referred to the kites that people fly like they did in Mary Poppins. No, as Rick explained, “The restaurant’s name refers to the bird, the red kite. It is a scavenger; so, these days they are often found near the roadways where roadkill is plentiful.

They once were plentiful. But farmers, not knowing better, shot them, thinking them to be birds of prey, killing chicks. They became nearly extinct in England, but they survived in Wales.” Recently, they have been reintroduced to England. Now they thrive. In fact, as we drove north last week, Rick counted seven in a 40-mile stretch of highway.

In order to conclude this post, we went looking for bird quotes. There are hundreds by famous people like John Lennon, Langston Hughes, and Charles Schulz. The one that I like the most was penned by Christina Rossetti: My heart is like a singing bird. If only that could be said by each of us. By God’s grace, may you be able to say that today.