I always thought I was reasonably observant, but two things happened recently that surprised me. In each case, something was brought to my attention that I had never noticed before, and suddenly I could see it everywhere.

The first thing comes from a couple of weekends ago. There are little birds which live next to the runway at the airfield where I go for Coastguard Air Patrol. Now, in all the times I had been out there, I had seen them exactly twice. I had never seen this kind of bird anywhere else, ever.

Since Leen is a birdwatcher, I asked her if she knew what they might be. The ensuing debate lasted quite a while. I looked at photos Leen dredged up from the Internet, saying inane things like "No, smaller than that. No, bigger than that. They might have had a black stripe. No, maybe they didn't." In the end, Leen identified them as Spur-Winged Plovers.

Ever since the Great Spur-Winged Plover Debate, I kid you not, I have seen the darn things EVERYWHERE. I've seen them in the horse paddocks down the road from my house as I drove past. I saw dozens of them beside the motorway last week when I took Wolf's in-laws to Goat Island. Suddenly the world is INFESTED with spur-winged plovers, a bird I had never, ever seen before, anywhere, except at Ardmore Airfield.

Now, these things must have been there to be seen the whole time. I've lived here for almost 30 years. They're quite distinctive looking and yet I never saw them until Leen told me what they were called.

The second incident was that Wolf's in-laws mentioned to me the warm, floral scent of the air in New Zealand. I thought they were mental. I've been to the tropics, and places like Samoa or Vanuatu DO have air redolent with a warm, heavy tropical perfume. New Zealand DOES NOT. It never has. Except that now it does, because ever since they told me so, I've been able to smell the flowers on the breeze and everything I breathe is warm garden-scented.

It's amazing.

Brunnen-"perhaps spur-winged plovers are demonic and only appear when you know their name"G