During the pandemic, I found solace in London's urban wildlife and green spaces. Like so many others, I was separated from both my family and my partner, confined to one room in a small flat without a garden. As a Year 6 teacher, I found the experience of online teaching sad and draining: my most at-risk pupils seemed suddenly so unreachable and I could do nothing to help them. Observing the birds in nearby Stationers Park helped me to feel moments of genuine calm in this time of loneliness and worry. I felt great admiration for the moorhen fledglings who I was told so rarely survived to maturity and were there, very much surviving. For the woodpecker: so light and yet able to bore its way through the hardest of challenges. Following their lead, I found that being alone in nature was something altogether different to loneliness. If these tiny feathered things could navigate this world, the painful fragility of life, so could I.