A bit of a tricky one this week, as all I’ve wanted to do is go outside for long walks in the sunshine which just isn’t possible at the moment!
That said, it was the start of ’30 Days Wild’ this week and I have quite a few wild highlights, which I’m very grateful for, including:
☕️ Having a ‘big wild breakfast’ in the sunshine
🐦 Learning about gulls and their complex taxonomy
🐣 Checking-in on my favourite webcam chicks
🌺 Painting all of the colours of spring
For the full story, please read below. Enjoy! 😊
Monday 31st May 2021
Another bank holiday! It was a bit of a shame that a long walk was off the cards, but I managed a short walk around town which is progress! The weather was so lovely and I really enjoyed taking in the vibrant colours of the plants and flowers that we walked past, along with the sounds of the blackbirds, sparrows and collared doves.
I haven’t been able to walk this far over for a little while so I was intrigued by some tall reed-looking plants near a local church that I’d never seen before. They must have appeared in the last couple of weeks. A bit of research suggests that this was a ‘red hot poker’. Very pretty!
Tuesday 1st June 2021
It was the first day of ’30 Days Wild’ today. To kick it off, the Wildlife Trusts held a nationwide ‘Big Wild Breakfast’. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and propped myself on a chair outside in the garden. I listened to the starlings, blackbirds and sparrows and enjoyed basking in the morning sunshine. The cats seemed to enjoy themselves too!
Wednesday 2nd June 2021
It’s getting harder and harder to force myself to rest my ankle. All I want to do is go out for as many walks as I can around working hours. I’ve never been particularly good at ‘resting’. When I finish work, I usually let the cats come upstairs, or cook, or garden. Or go for a walk. All of these things usually mean I’m up on my feet or running around after something – an ingredient I forgot to buy, a cat trying to absolutely destroy the sofa, and so on…
To make sure I actually did rest my ankle today, I turned on The Stubborn Light of Things podcast and put my phone down. I wanted to listen to this episode properly. And I’m really glad I did. Melissa Harrison was at the beach in this one and she talked a bit about gulls. I’m always guilty of saying ‘oh look a seagull’ when I see a gull of some kind flying around. Thing is, there’s no such thing as a ‘seagull’!
In fact, there are so many types of gulls and, confession, I really haven’t put the effort into learning the any of them. As well as being very intelligent birds, it turns out gulls are actually really difficult to identify as their plumage changes a lot compared to other birds, but I reckon I should still try a bit harder. They get a pretty bad rep and that’s only because they often outsmart us!
Thursday 3rd June 2021
I love this picture of a little owl in my magazine and I feel so lucky to have seen one in Yorkshire a couple of weeks ago. Something I didn’t know about little owls – and learnt this from the article – is that they can pursue prey on foot. I feel like that could be quite entertaining to see!
Friday 4th June 2021
Today felt like a good day to see how various webcam chicks are doing. I’ve followed a few this year, including: the Leamington peregrines, Somerset barn owls and the Rutland ospreys. The barn owls still look very small and fluffy. But the ospreys are pretty mature now and I can’t believe how quickly the peregrines have grown too! I have a particular soft spot for these three and, geek that I am, I decided to put forward three names for them in a Warwickshire Wildlife Trust competition – I’ll tell you what they were if I win!
As a side note, my favourite webcam-chick-related story this year has got to be this tweet from the Hawk and Owl Trust back in May:
The tawny owl chick was already enormous by this point!!! 😂
Saturday 5th June 2021
Spring has influenced quite a few birthday art pieces recently and, after a nice couple of hours in the garden, I worked on two of these today. I can’t share them in full just yet, but here are a couple of snippets! I love picking out the colours – it’s a careful and considered process, yet I often find I end up getting drawn to purples/blues, reds/oranges and yellows.
Sunday 6th June 2021
To end the week, I had my first walk to the meadow since my ankle incident. As I’ve said many times in my blog posts, the various lockdowns have definitely made me appreciate the local area and, having been denied the opportunity to even go out for local walks in the past 12 days, I honestly couldn’t appreciate this meadow more now!
Although it’d only been a week and a half since I was last here, everything has grown so much since then. The white cow parsley mixed in with the bright yellow buttercups lining the road was particularly impressive and I was so excited to hear a few of the regulars: wrens, song thrushes, chiffchaffs and chaffinches.
I’ve missed the meadow so much and, though I don’t think I’m ready to do this walk every day just yet, I’m really looking forward to wandering through there 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 