Felt an intense need to be outdoors yesterday, so gathered up my reading & writing, took a train as far as I could sensibly go, then walked & walked through hail & snow. Woke to scenes like Alan Garner books: rocky outcrops rising from clouds, sounds of curlews, plovers, owls.

Just pressed send on the finished manuscript of the book that comes after The Frayed Atlantic Edge. Called Afloat, it's about North-Atlantic ocean journeys, sealife, & communities - built on little rowed & paddled boats - who've called these sea-ravaged or icebound coasts home.

Down in the wetlands, and there's a lot of carp fishing going on...

Spending Easter with my partner’s family (first time I’ve met them) by the Snowy Mountains & Murray-Darling River. Loving the way bird life swings from familiar in mountains (kestrel, pipit, raven), to wildly different by the house (kookaburra, gang-gang, black-shouldered kite).

Decided to spend a while without wheels (my van was eventually written off after being stolen, then found). Instead, buying new kayak trolleys to be on the water when spring really starts: a mile to Birmingham canals, 30 to the Severn, 40 more to sea, then not too far to Ireland.

Now back in rainy Brum, giving lectures about animals in history. But with Morgan Summers-Smith working in Milan last week, I got to tag along for a weekend. Some seriously beautiful spots to spend slow mornings with camera, espresso, & pistachio pastries...

Transatlantic cousins: a chickadee on a tiny Maine island a few days ago & a coal tit in central Birmingham today. Autumn/fall flocks flitting through both places.

4 more boat workshops in Maine & Cape Cod. There's an odd little paradox at work: I've never been anywhere with so many builders of bespoke & beautiful wooden boats, but many talk of UK coasts (esp the Cornish pilot gig & St Ayles skiff scenes) as their aspiration for the region.

Two photos - one old, one new (taken through a lens drizzled with sea) - to show a thing I love. In a kayak on rough water (the kind that sounds so vast & incomprehensible it starts to feel like silence), looking across swell to see there are seaducks in every wave crest.

The wind dropped in time for low tide & suddenly the sea was alive. Cooing & gurgling ducks & grebes. Wingbeats of eagles, loons & huge herondactyls. Colonies of seals, singing & grunting in the distance. Some even hauled out among trees like forest seals.

How to sum up the last few days? So cold my legs seized up. Often so windy I landed by lunchtime. Camera mainly steamed up. But 100s of loons in the waves. Each red flash, a chipmunk or squirrel. Retreats into warm boat workshops/bookshops/archives full of generous Maine people.

For years, I've had a Winslow Homer print on my wall: a Maine dory climbing chunky swell as fog rolls in. Yesterday I rowed up to Lowell's Boat Shop, where that boat was developed & is made. Wildlife was at eye level (as usual in little boats) on the banks of the Merrimack River.

When the sea gets rough & intensely tiring, there can be little more enlivening than the sudden appearance of faces in the waves...

One of those days when speeding tides carry you far further than oars alone could. Drifting between sandbanks & past saltmarshes, there's lots of wildlife: dragonflies & monarch butterflies out at sea, countless birds, & noses with seals beneath.

In Maine & Massachusetts to learn about birch bark canoes & cedar dories. Yesterday began at sea, with an 8ft mako shark for company, & ended in sheltered bays where forests full of chickadees surround the buildings boats are built in.

Loving this turn to cold, bright mornings, just as the funghi start showing off...

Surprise news that the van has been found & the person who did the burglary arrested. No news till next week on what state it's in, or whether it's still full of kayak/mountain gear (after three months missing). But good developments - might even get my favourite paddle back!

A new blog post - Navigating Sápmi - about one of the richest places I've ever travelled. So much wildlife, stunning seascapes, & beautiful wooden boats that are embedded in coastal cultures of immense sophistication: davidgange.com/navigating-sap…