For quite some time I despaired at the public’s lack of knowledge of trees. I failed to understand why they couldn’t tell one tree from the other. Just the common ones, I didn’t want everyone to be a closet dendrologist. I felt that it was reasonable for most people to be able to recognise a flowing cherry or a magnolia. They didn’t need to know if the cherry was Prunus x yedoensis or Prunus serrulata, but they did need to know that it was cherry and not a chestnut. My rationale was that most people can identify a range of animals, so why not a range of trees? With animals, we are expected to be able to tell the difference between an elephant and a duck, or a sheep and a goldfish. Even within a single species, it’s normal to be able to distinguish a labrador from a poodle, or a lion and a cheetah. I found it strange that people knew the difference between a dolphin and a shark but not an oak and a sycamore. And it’s not like seeing a dolphin or a shark, is an everyday occurrence for most people. And then I started to wonder how many oak trees the average person would pass under before they saw a shark. The oak-to-shark ratio; is it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, who knows? I didn’t. I was then told that I thought too much, and they were probably right.

Sometime later my social media algorithms recommended that I count some birds. I’m unsure what combination of clicks or slow scrolls produced that, but my interest was stirred. No doubt birds will appear in my feeds forever more, but better birds than pictures of people’s breakfast. I did not consider myself to be an ornithologist fledging or otherwise, but I did know that not all birds that are black in colour are blackbirds, and Zebra finches don’t have four legs. So I felt suitably qualified to take part in a bird survey, how hard could it be? As part of the survey, I was asked if I knew the difference between a House Sparrow and a Hedge Sparrow, could I tell Song Sparrows from Chipping Sparrows? Maybe this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park after all. Surely, a sparrow is a sparrow is a sparrow, but it got worse; looking at beige birds could I distinguish between a female Chaffinch and a female Greenfinch, or a juvenile Goldfinch and Dunnock? A Dunnock… was that actually a thing? Clearly, there was more to beige bird spotting than I had thought. Undeterred a quick scroll through the internet was all that I needed (re-realigning my algorithms), and I was soon able to distinguish between a Hedge Sparrow and a House Sparrow. With coffee in hand, the inner twitcher in me was ready to be released and I went forth to count birds. Which, being a backyard study, involved sitting inside and looking out the window. In the pursuit of citizen science, one should not risk letting one’s coffee get cold. So I counted birds, and it turned out that not all beige birds are the same.

In between counting lulls and coffee refills, I had time to contemplate the oak-to-shark ratio, not the number, but the reason we don’t see everyday objects. Here I was seeing beige birds for the first time. The irony of the situation was not lost on me, and I could visualize some irate twitcher in a slightly grubby green anorak with a pair of excessively expensive binoculars, despairing at the hapless arborist who only just worked out what a dunnock was.

Observational blindness or perhaps observational ambivalence…

It’s not that we don’t see beige birds or oak trees, it’s that we see too many of them. Our brains filter what we see to stop our heads from exploding (selective attention – see below). Of the thousands of things we see in a single view, we only register things of perceived importance. The rest becomes a background tapestry. Perhaps a rich tapestry, but one we are not focused on. So I don’t need to despair at the public, I need to make trees seem more interesting, become more important. I need them/us/you to be able to see the forest and the trees, and maybe some beige birds too.

• Selective attention explained; Jonny Thomson, philosophyminis (Instagram) and/or Daniel Dennett’s paper, Cognitive Wheels