I had a lot of fun squeezing some walks for the Big Wild Walk into Week 42 of my wild challenge! Another very busy week and another month gone – goodbye!
Walks always bring a range of wild encounters and, this week, I got to explore two new places: Walsall and Liverpool! There were lots of highlights, as ever, including:
🐦 Walking with lots of jays
🍁 Painting Autumn leaves
🦜 Walsall’s ducks, pigeons, geese and… parakeets!
🐯 Tasmanian tigers
I managed 47km over the week for my ‘Big Wild Walk’ – the rain scuppered my walking plans for Sunday, but still not a bad effort! Hope your November starts off well and hope you enjoy reading the full story below 😊
Monday 25th October 2021
One of the perks of working a Saturday is the Monday you get off ‘in lieu’ – no work for me today!
I won’t rub it in too much, I promise. In fact, the day started with a bit of stress. The cats needed to go to the vets for their booster jabs. I’m sure I find the whole experience more anxiety-inducing than they do. But, suffice to say, we all survived the adventure and I truly felt like I was in positive time when we all got home by 9am. It was time for a walk.
The highlight of the walk was a flock of goldfinches and chaffinches – there were so many of them on a stretch of road towards a village called Willington. I heard the goldfinches first and then saw them flying around in a tight cluster. They landed in a tree near me and that’s when I noticed the chaffinches in the mixed flock. You can’t see them very well in this photo but hopefully it gives you an idea. And, as a side note, I managed to knock 9.5km off my 30km Big Wild Walk target!
Tuesday 26th October 2021
Jays. There are so many jays around at the moment. On my walk yesterday, I saw about 5 of them on one stretch of road – though, if I’m honest, some of them could have been the same bird moving around. In any case, there must’ve been at least 3 jays in the vicinity. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen jays on this stretch before.
I always thought jays were birds you tend to hear rather than see but these ones were silent. Intrigued, I had a look at my big bird book to see if there’s a reason why they’re particularly visible in Autumn. From what I read I think it could be the oak trees. Apparently jays spend a lot of time in Autumn collecting acorns. There were a lot of oaks lining the road so that could explain it.
Wednesday 27th October 2021
Speaking of oaks. I was so mesmerised by this leaf on Monday that I just had to take a picture of it on my walk. Today, I was still totally mesmerised – to the extent that I decided to start painting it. It isn’t finished yet (the edges need tidying up and I need to focus on the details) but adding the yellows, then oranges, browns and greens was very relaxing.
Thursday 28th October 2021
I’m determined to get a proper walk ticked off every day this week for the Big Wild Walk so I went out as soon as it started to get light. It was just a short walk around town. I love this time of the day – dark enough to think the rest of the world is still sleeping but light enough to be on the brink of sunrise. Once the light comes, it comes quite quickly.
I also enjoy seeing flowers in this light. It adds a whole new dimension to their colours.
Friday 29th October 2021
Well it was a very different one for me today. I travelled to Walsall yesterday evening to stay at a friend’s house before travelling up to Liverpool for the weekend. My friend was working during the day but I’d booked the day off so had the opportunity to explore the town. My friend’s recommendation: go to the arboretum.
And he was right. It was such a beautiful place and, despite getting caught in the rain a couple of times, I had a good walk around the park and enjoyed wandering through the trees. One of the ponds in the arboretum had a whole range of waterfowl – mallards, Canada geese, cormorants, some sort of white duck, moorhens, coots and, of course, pigeons. I even got to see Walsall’s parakeet population further into the park. It was a lovely morning!
Saturday 30th October 2021
I got to explore another new place today! Liverpool! And the ‘wild highlight’ here was St James Mount and the Gardens outside Liverpool Cathedral. A former cemetery, it was turned into a public park in the 1970s. I find places like this intriguing – the gravestones lined up against the walls a solemn reminder of its history. There was an air of sadness in a beautiful sort of way and I found a lot of peace as I walked through the park with my friends.
Sunday 31st October 2021
If anyone else was travelling from the North West towards London and the South East today, you know it was absolute chaos. I was only trying to get to the Midlands but problems on the London lines meant we all squeezed onto the only available trains heading in that vague South East direction. It wasn’t pleasant and, as I left my final train, I turned to a young woman next to me and said “good luck and Happy Halloween”. I’m not sure she got my humour!
Before that moment, I’d been lucky enough to have a seat on one of my journeys. So I passed the time with BBC Wildlife Magazine and Into the Tangled Bank. A piece about the thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) dovetailed nicely with Parikian’s chapter on zoos. I – like, I imagine, many people – feel quite sad when I read about the Tasmanian Tiger. A beautiful creature that is now extinct. The article suggested it may have gone extinct later than the official date of 1982 but it is nevertheless gone. And the last known individual died in Hobart Zoo in 1936. Not the most up-beat wild encounter to end the week but reading about these things is important. I really wish we’d been able to save it.
*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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