What a start to September! Week 34 brought the end of my walking challenge and, somehow, a bit of summer – definitely more than we got in August!
Some of my highlights of the week:
🌸 Admiring a garden anemone
👏 Enjoying some final fundraising walks
🦜 Learning about the awe-inspiring colours of the natural world
🦋 Walking through the Shropshire hills
More details below and thank you once again for all of the support with my fundraising walks over August. I raised a lot of money for Parkinson’s UK in grandad’s memory and I think the walks did me an awful lot of good too 😊
Monday 30th August 2021
Although I took a BBC Wildlife Magazine on my canal adventure last week, I’d be lying if I said I’d opened it once… I was just too tired from the walking! So I made up for lost time today and read an article about colour.
Colour in the natural world absolutely fascinates me. The ability of some animals to actually change colour is even more baffling and it was the focus of this article. I learnt about seasonal pigment change (e.g. the whitening of Arctic foxes and snowshoe hares in winter) along with more rapid colour transformations like the blue ringed octopus that tweaks cells called iridophores to send out a ‘dazzling warning display’. Iridophores are a type of chromatophore which is a colour-producing cell found in fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and cephalopods. Iridophores are iridescent colours, but there are other types of chromatophore too, including:
- Melanophores (black, brown and red)
- Xanthophores (yellow)
- Erythrophores (oranges and red)
- Leucophores (iridescent white)
Tuesday 31st August 2021
This evening, I did my last ‘walk for grandad’. It was a nice long walk to Burmington and Tidmington. I had a little tear in my eye while I thought about grandad and reflected on all of the walks I’d completed over the month.
I’ve walked 322 miles in total and raised over £800 for Parkinson’s UK in grandad’s memory. I’ve seen sunrises and sunsets. I’ve walked through fields, I’ve walked along canals and rivers, I’ve walked (and sometimes scrambled!) up hills. And I’ve been lucky enough to see so much wildlife. I think my grandad would’ve loved it.
Wednesday 1st September 2021
Is anyone else struggling with this gloom in the UK at the moment? I keep thinking it’s October already! One bit of brightness is my anemone at the back of the garden. I remember being totally surprised when this bloomed two years ago during our first summer in the house. I think there was a single flower that year. Last summer we had a few more and, this time around, we have over 10 flowers and buds!
Thursday 2nd September 2021
Colour seems to be the theme of the week. This morning, I started looking through a book that I was given for my birthday. It’s called Nature’s Palette and it’s a beautiful book. I haven’t mentioned my art for a little while but I’ve been doing a few bits and pieces in the background that I hope to share soon. And, alongside that, I’m trying to understand colour a little more.
The book focuses on Abraham Werner’s classification system of colour. He devised this in 1774 to help identify and describe minerals. Later artists and naturalists added more colours to the list. For each one, an example of an animal, ‘vegetable’ and mineral is given to demonstrate the colour in the natural world. For ‘Berlin Blue’, for instance, it’s ‘Wing feathers of Jay’, Hepatica (Liverwort) and Blue Sapphire. So interesting!
Friday 3rd September 2021
I found myself stalking a collared dove in the garden today. We’ve had quite a few collared doves and wood pigeons in our cherry tree recently. The wood pigeons seem to chase each other all the time. Not really sure why! In this case, on the other hand, the collared dove decided to have a little perch on the fence, walked up and down it and then decided to head across to the cherry tree. It hopped from branch to branch before giving up the endeavour, flew away onto a garage roof nearby instead and let out its cooing call. They do make me laugh!
Saturday 4th September 2021
I ended up wandering down a different kind of canal today – the Shrewsbury Canal. This is an example of a ‘lost canal’. One that was closed in stages during the 20th Century. My partner and I stumbled across this while visiting family. We went for a walk along the River Severn in Shrewsbury and headed out towards a place called Uffington. On our way, we followed part of the Shropshire Way and it brought us to the old canal.
It was impossible to tell what it was at first. There were trees, bushes, brambles and all sorts growing out of the old cutting. The only suspicion was the shape of the space that the foliage grew out of and it’s alignment to the former tow-path. A handy sign confirmed our suspicions. I also have to mention some of the kids artwork that littered a passage under a bridge on our walk – some excellent ducks, bees and dinosaurs there!
Sunday 5th September 2021
Well the gloom has definitely lifted! We ended our short Shropshire visit with a walk across a very dramatic landscape. The walk involved some steep climbs and some outstanding views across Shropshire. At the very top was Devil’s Chair – a piercing outcrop of rock. This dramatic scene definitely needs to be painted. I’m thinking watercolour and ink…
The way up to Devil’s Chair was also interesting. We passed through some woodland first. Chiffchaffs – arguably my favourite bird ever – were singing their repetitive notes as we climbed. As most of the trees cleared, the heather and gorse took over, with the occasional rowan making an appearance. There were lots of skylarks up there and some butterflies as well – mainly small tortoiseshells but I also saw a red admiral and a fritillary of some kind. There was also an antler moth (I used an app to identify this critter!) and I found a beautiful feather. The consensus was that this was probably from a buzzard.
*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 