How am I 13 weeks into this already? It feels like so much has happened since I first started these weekly blogs…
Unlike last week, Week 13 brought a lot of wintery weather. ‘Mother nature’ really was quite naughty. That said, I still had fun with my daily ‘random acts of wildness’ by:
🌳 Exploring some new places (despite the snow and hail!)
🐣 Reading about the weird and wonderful world of bird nest construction
🐢 Learning about sea turtle navigation
🦋 Working on a butterfly painting
Read on to find out more 😊
Monday 5th April 2021
What a bizarre day. It wasn’t supposed to rain, it was supposed to stay dry, but, instead, it decided to snow this morning! We went to a local arboretum to see some family and saw all of these trees – that had just started to get their leaves – covered in sleet and snow. Incredible.
Then, to spice things up, by the end of the day, the sun had come out and, though it was still chilly, there was a hint of warmth in the air. And an added bonus was that we spotted a swallow on an evening walk. So we started with snow and ended with a swallow… Poor swallows must be very confused!
Tuesday 6th April 2021
The cold hit me again this morning. I think it was -1C when I went out for a jog. It was a beautiful morning and I enjoyed the run but it really did feel like January/February again! As I followed one of my routes around Shipston, I was reassured to see that lots of trees were still coming into bud. Even our cherry tree in the garden has decided to blossom early and doesn’t seem to be suffering in the cold weather. I really hope the warmth appears again soon!
Wednesday 7th April 2021
I had a bit of a noisy walk this afternoon as the farmer was harvesting the turnips in the field and there were a lot of people out and about so I didn’t spot many birds this time. That said, the skylarks caught my attention the whole way.
Skylarks always give me a little chuckle. They have such a jovial tune that makes them sound so happy. Their songs are also so loud. I always expect them to be just above the ground – that’s how close they sound – but you always have to look up with a skylark. They often look like they’re flying directly upwards as well, ascending higher and higher into the sky and that’s where their tweeting comes from.
Thursday 8th April 2021
I learnt some very interesting things about turtles today in Incredible Journeys by David Barrie. Turtles, as we’ve all seen in Attenborough documentaries, return to the beaches where they were born to lay their own eggs. How they locate these beaches is still somewhat of a mystery. How the baby turtles know where to go when they get to the sea after they’ve hatched is also quite a mystery too. From the book, it sounds like both adult turtles and hatchlings are likely to react to magnetism, olfactory cues (i.e. smells), the direction/movement of waves and they may also make use of visual landmarks.
Wave direction really interested me. It’s hard to imagine how a baby turtle can, instinctively, make use of such a thing to aid their navigation at sea (for the first time) when it wouldn’t mean much to most humans. Barrie writes:
Lohmann eventually discovered that they [baby olive ridley sea turtles] are sensitive to the characteristic rotational accelerations – upward, backward, downward then forward – to which they are exposed within an approaching wave (D. Barrie, Incredible Journeys, chapter 21)
So, when they leave the beach and get to the sea, the hatchlings somehow react to the direction of the waves and adjust their own direction of travel accordingly. And further experiments have shown that pretty much all turtles behave in the same way. Mind. Blown.
Friday 9th April 2021
It’s been so nice to explore some new places this week. This morning, for example, a friend and I went to Hay Wood in Warwickshire to have a walk. It was very cold and I ended up testing my new raincoat out…!
A buzzard gave us a proper treat. She was perched in a tree and flew off when we got too close, but she ended up heading towards another perch not too far away. She stayed very still and we had a fabulous time looking at her through the binoculars.
Saturday 10th April 2021
I read a very interesting article today in this month’s BBC Wildlife Magazine. This one was about birds and their nests. I knew nests were intricate and I’ve always wondered how on earth birds create them but I had no idea that nest construction varied so much.
Goldcrests, for example, begin their nests by weaving spider silk between twigs on a tree, house martins use mud to construct their nests, little ringed plovers create a hollow in the ground and great tits find cavities in trees. Reading this article really highlighted how connected the natural world is – in ways I hadn’t even considered. All birds rely heavily on the resources around them to construct their nests, whether they be made of twigs, leaves, moss, lichens, hair, wool, spider silk, mud, etc.
Sunday 11th April 2021
Four seasons in a day. That’s how I’d summarise today. After an 11 mile walk in the snow, hail, wind, rain and sunshine, I spent some of the afternoon warming up and working on a new art piece. This one is a small tortoiseshell butterfly. I decided to paint this after I spotted a small tortoiseshell in the sunshine a couple of weeks ago. It isn’t quite finished but I’m not too far off. Hopefully warmer times will come again soon!
*For anyone new to my blog, let me explain a bit more about what these posts are about. Every week I share a summary of my daily ‘acts of wildness’. This wildlife challenge was inspired by ’30 Days Wild’ and ’12 Days Wild’ from The Wildlife Trusts. The ‘356’ isn’t a typo – typically, I only thought about doing this after 2021 had already started so I won’t be able to do a full year this time. Next year will be different though! Thank you and I hope you’ve enjoyed the post!
Ramblings of a (very!) amateur artist 
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