Though the weather has been a tad un-spring-like this week, the breaks between the showers have been an absolute treat. And we had a bank holiday this week – what more could a gal ask for?!
My wild highlights include:
🐦 Adding some more birds to the 2021 list
🌷 Identifying spring plants and flowers
🎨 A new watercolour painting
🐣 Finding some new chicks to spy on
Thank you for reading! 😊
Monday 3rd May 2021
Don’t you just love a bank holiday Monday? Sadly, the weather in the UK didn’t treat us very well this bank hol, but, before the rain hit, my partner and I managed to make a trip to Brandon Marsh Nature Reserve. We got there nice and early so it was lovely and quiet. The marsh lies just on the outskirts of Coventry and it’s managed by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.
We managed to add a few more birds to our 2021 list during our visit – new spots included some tufted ducks, shoveller ducks and blackcaps. Blackcaps have a very peculiar alarm call and I realised I’d heard this noise before on one of my regular walks – I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for more blackcaps near home! You can hear the alarm call here if you want to. We also heard a cuckoo so we’ve added that to the list too. It’s almost impossible to actually see a cuckoo these days.
Tuesday 4th May 2021
I keep seeing a plant and not knowing what it is keeps bugging me. It’s a plant with tiny blue flowers clustered near the stem, with long pointy leaves. I had a look in the Collins Gem Wildflower book and just couldn’t find it in there. I thought that was a bit odd because I walk past these plants all the time.
After a bit more research, I started to wonder if they were forget-me-nots. The blue flowers looked a lot like the flowers on forget-me-nots but I still wasn’t convinced – the leaves and structure of the plant just didn’t fit. After some more research, I settled on evergreen bugloss. Funny thing is, when I saw the word ‘bugloss’, I remembered that I’d definitely looked this plant up last year. Brain like a sieve!
Wednesday 5th May 2021
I read a bit more of Sue Stuart Smith’s book this afternoon. The chapter I read focused on the importance of gardening to human culture. Ancient human culture, more specifically. It made me think a lot about what we may have lost as a species over the ages. We’ve obviously gained a lot too, but the care and importance assigned to growing things feels like it belongs to another age for most of us… My cat Claude thought it was an interesting read too!
Thursday 6th May 2021
After the excitement of the Leamington peregrine webcam last week, I checked out some other live streams. The Somerset barn owls caught my eye – two barn owls (Finn and Orla) have had three little owlets, with a fourth egg still cooking. There’s sound with this one so, though I didn’t see the owlets when I was having a look, I could definitely hear them.
And this does beg the question – what on earth does a baby owl look like? Hopefully I’ll soon find out!
Friday 7th May 2021
I went out for a jog to Tidmington this morning. It was a beautiful morning and I thought I should make the most of it. I paused the jog once I got to Tidmington and walked through my usual spot, looking out for birds. I thought I’d seen a long-tailed tit and then realised, with disappointment, that it was ‘just’ a sparrow. But then I checked myself.
I thought back to an episode of The Stubborn Light of Things that I’d listened to earlier in the week. Melissa Harrison had been trying to record turtle doves during one of her local expeditions and she’d had no luck. The only birds she saw or heard were ‘big, fat, smug, dim wood pigeons’. And then she checked herself too. She reflected on why we only seem to value creatures once they become rare or at risk of extinction. And that we’re often ‘disgusted’ by animals that inconvenience us (even though their behaviour is often influenced by people and their waste) or, like humans, are abundant and therefore aren’t worth appreciating. But, as she rightly points out, they might not always be. Passenger pigeons were abundant and they all got wiped out.
So, as I continued my jog, I reflected on my reaction to the sparrow, determined to change my ways. And I thought about that little sparrow specifically and hoped I’d see it again soon.
Saturday 8th May 2021
The rain came back with a vengeance today. It was the equivalent of those ‘wet play times’ you had at school. So I spent some time this morning finishing a watercolour pied flycatcher. I wanted to paint this bird after I spotted one on a walk a couple of weeks ago. I have a bit of a soft spot for pied wagtails so I had a lovely time painting this other pied critter.
Sunday 9th May 2021
With the sun shining down on us, my partner and I finished the week with a beautiful, long walk near Winchcombe in the Cotswolds. We were very lucky to have some lovely views of the Malvern Hills, Cheltenham and Gloucester. The plants and flowers also caught my eye. I think I’ve managed to identify all of these: the white and pink flower is from a crab apple tree, the purple flowers belong to an alpine clematis and a bugle and the pink flowers are red campion. Hopefully I won’t forget these too quickly!
*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 