356 Days Wild: Week 9

Well, I feel like I’ve learnt quite a few things this week:

1) Grief can sometimes play tricks on you.
2) If your phone tells you there’s an 80% chance of heavy rain and you go out for a walk because you think you know better, be prepared to get wet.
3) I think I’m now starting to truly understand the benefits of my wildlife challenge on wellbeing.

Let me explain number 3 a bit more. I’ve written before about how much I enjoyed the wildlife challenges that The Wildlife Trusts encouraged last year. For those of you who are new to my blog, ’30 Days Wild’ and ’12 Days Wild’ were the inspiration behind my own almost-year-long-challenge – it’ll be a full year next year!

I felt, though, that whilst I had worked hard to bring nature and wildlife into my everyday life for these periods of time, I struggled to keep it up as soon as the challenge ended. So my own ‘wild challenge’ this year was about embedding wildlife and nature into my lifestyle. That’s why some of the ‘daily acts of wildness’ are quite small, like reading a chapter in a book or looking up some information about an animal or plant.

Following my family’s recent bereavement – and even before that, if I’m honest – there have been good days and bad days. Despite the upbeat tone that I hope my posts usually convey, we all have days where we sometimes wonder what the point is of getting up. I hope that’s not too uncomfortable for anyone to hear, but I think it’s important for me to share that.

So, as I work my way through these feelings, having something to focus on and brighten up the day has really helped. Even on bad days, it’s felt like an achievement to drag myself out for a walk, spend some time in the garden, do a little painting of a bird, or read a bit about an animal I don’t know much about. I never realised documenting this challenge would be so important.

Monday 8th March 2021

It was time for another jog this morning. I went out to Tidmington again and did around a 6km loop (not all running!) There’s a little road that I love going up on this route. My partner and I often walk this way and there are always birds to see. Today, I saw plenty of garden birds (robins, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits) and spotted a couple of rabbits too.

Tuesday 9th March 2021

Yesterday ended up being a bit of a day… Lesson number 1 was learnt. You see, I thought one of my cats was seriously unwell when, in reality, at worst he probably had a furball. He’s absolutely fine but grieving definitely skewed my faculties!

Anyway, I headed out for a walk towards the end of the day to try and make the most of what was left of the sunshine. I was lucky with my birds today. I spotted two green woodpeckers, a heron, plenty of goldfinches, great tits, robins, a couple of ducks (let’s say they were mallards – most likely candidates!) and a buzzard. I only saw the buzzard from a distance. She was perched in a tree, looking out over the fields. I love it when buzzards do that. They always look so majestic.

Wednesday 10th March 2021

I’ve been reading some more chapters of Incredible Journeys over the past few days. An excellent aspect of the book is that it covers the journeys of a range of different animals, including insects and mammals. It made me think of some red admiral butterflies that I remember seeing when I was on a boat going to Bardsey Island in Wales last August. I thought it was odd to see butterflies on a boat, crossing the sea, but it turns out that this isn’t particularly unusual at all. When we were on the island there were loads of red admirals too and it turns out they travel a lot further than that to get to us each summer – they come all the way from North Africa!

Thursday 11th March 2021

Today was quite busy at work so I took breaks where I could. Breaks usually involve visiting the cats in ‘their room’ downstairs and encouraging them out into the garden when the weather’s nice. I definitely need to start doing a bit more in the garden, but, for now, I enjoyed spending some time admiring a hyacinth in the sunshine.

Friday 12th March 2021

Lesson 2 was learnt this morning. I woke up and had an itching to go for a walk. To my dismay, BBC weather told me that there was an 80% chance of rain. I looked outside, saw it wasn’t raining yet and decided to go out. I was about halfway through the walk when the heavens opened. Despite my optimism, I’d decided to wear a raincoat so I wasn’t totally unprepared for the downpour, but being pummelled by the wind and rain at 8am wasn’t exactly what I’d call pleasant…! That said, what could make you feel more alive on a Friday morning than getting as drenched as a drowned rat?

Saturday 13th March 2021

I spent a few minutes today reading through an online article about wildlife to spot in March. I’ve seen a couple of bee-looking-things buzzing around recently and I’m now wondering whether some of them could have been dark-edged bee-flies (the first mention in the article). Didn’t even realise such an insect existed! The chiff chaff, song thrush and yellow hammer also got shout-outs – I always love seeing/hearing these birds – and so did the pheasant and the common toad. As for gannets, well, I’d love to see them sometime!

Sunday 14th March 2021

Green woodpeckers treat me so regularly on my walks around Shipston – and Warwickshire more broadly – so I decided it was time to do another piece of art focusing on this bird. I drew quite a basic picture of a green woodpecker last year so I opted for watercolours this time. It was a bit of a weekend project and I made sure to take my time. It might still need a few little tweaks but it was such a pleasure to paint her.