WHENEVER I feel stressed or upset I look out of the window and watch the birds for a few minutes.

Groups of starlings hanging around the bird table, cheeky magpies hopping about, chattering sparrows flitting in and out of the hedge and, most importantly, the crows who used to be nervous about coming down for food but are now more brazen.

We have helped to sustain five lots of babies this year - the starlings with their insatiable appetites, the fluffy little sparrows, stub-tailed blackbirds, magpies with their long, spindly legs, and the baby crows who look quite menacing when all perched together in our apple tree at dusk.

Watching them and learning about them is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and it’s free.

So it is quite alarming to hear that, in a survey, four in ten people could not identify one of Britain’s most distinctive birds, the robin.

Fourteen per cent couldn’t tell the difference between a magpie and a blackbird and three in four would only feel confident identifying common birds like pigeons.

It’s sad that so many people are growing up with little awareness of the natural world. I have no doubt that the same sample group would have no problem identifying the latest iPhone.

More than half of those questioned in the research commissioned by Redrow Homes, could not tell a moth from a butterfly and a quarter did not know that a caterpillar changed into a butterfly.

I put it down to the way we are growing up. Those of us in our fifties and sixties are possibly the last generations who had a childhood spent exploring the countryside around the towns and villages where we lived.

Roaming around unsupervised, we would go for miles, crossing fields, becks and meadows coming across all sorts of wildlife. We would go fishing in streams and ponds.

If you didn’t know the name of a bird, animal, insect or fish, it was likely that somebody else in the gang would.

It’s all a far cry from how kids live today. For the past three decades at least, youngsters have grown up being ferried everywhere, and many would rather spend their days in their bedrooms glued to screens than outside discovering the natural world.

I don’t know what schools do nowadays but when I was at primary school in the 1970s we went on regular nature walks, looking in hedgerows and fields identifying wildflowers, birds and any small mammals we came across. We had little books in which we would write down what we had seen and stick in leaves to identify.

You don't see kids doing this nowadays. Regular nature walks should be compulsory, maybe for adults too

We know that nature is good for our wellbeing. It helps enormously with our mental health, but we don’t make the most of it.

Of those questioned in the survey, 62 per cent wish they had learnt more about nature as a child.

But it’s never too late. With nature you never stop learning. Even expert naturalists like Chris Packham are constantly finding out more about the birds and animals with whom we share this planet.

Watching just one episode of Springwatch can educate people about the wildlife and nature living all around us. You might have to switch over from the latest gameshow for an hour, but it’s really worth the sacrifice.

If you set up feeders it’s amazing how many birds you can spot in just ten minutes of watching, even in a small garden or yard, or even a windowsill.

Get yourself a book on British garden birds and tick them off as you spot them. You might even enjoy it.

The robin is the one with the red breast.