Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that whisks you away to a

calmer place. Today I'm chatting to Maya Rose Craig.

You have all these things coming up about how good nature is for your mental health,

and I think part of that is kind of it follows its own rules. It isn't part of

you know the internet or consumption or you know the cities that we've sort of

built for ourselves, it's just its own thing. And I think that's one of the

reasons why it is so refreshing and I think for me like I've always been

terrible at like mindfulness and meditation and things like that. But like for

me going on a walk out in the country somewhere that is my version of like

mindfulness. Maya Rose is an ornithologist and environmentalist, a diversity

activist, as well as a writer, speaker and broadcaster. Oh and she's only 20

years old. Oh my goodness she is incredible, she's completely astounding. She's

been a twitcher that's someone who travels to specific locations to spot birds

since she was literally a few days old. She goes by bird girl because there is

nothing and I mean nothing this young woman doesn't know about birds and

about their environments. She's written the most beautiful book also called

bird girl but interestingly it's about so much more than birds as is this

gorgeous chat I had with her. It's about adventure, it's about the relationship

between nature and mental health and it's about encouraging patients. Maya

Rose often has had to wait days, weeks, years in some cases to spot a particular

bird and I think there's a lot we can all learn from that about slowing our

lives down a bit. This episode of Happy Place is brought to you by Dyson and

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