30 Days Wild in a grid

 30 Days Wild is an annual celebration of the natural world led in June by the UK Wildlife Trusts, and is full of wonderful ideas for getting in touch with nature for all the family. This year I thought I'd do a 30-day grid of mini-paintings, one for each day, inspired by something in the natural world that caught my eye that day. It was great fun!

A month of nature - June 2020

Summer is here, and the wild world is being celebrated in various ways this month! The Wildlife Trusts have their annual 30 Days Wild event throughout the month - though this year it's a much more constrained affair because of the pandemic restrictions.

And at the start of the month we had International Nature Journaling Week, with daily prompts and lots of links to resources and workshops, on top of a whole load of guest blogs which give a great insight into keeping a nature journal from many perspectives (including mine!). Take a few minutes to check it out.

To finish the month there's National Insect Week - celebrating the little things that pollinate our plants and keep our ecosystems healthy - followed by Swift Awareness Week, which takes us into July.

We started off with the same warm and sunny weather that we'd enjoyed in May. The flowerbed is looking rather lush...

I've continued watching the peregrine chicks via the webcams at Leamington Spa and Nottingham. As the chicks grew, they became quite mobile and often disappeared from view of the cameras completely.

One of the prompts for Nature Jounaling Week was 'Nature Finds' - definitely a strength of mine as I'm always filling my pockets with interesting bits and pieces to draw later.

Of course, you don't need flora and fauna to be able to make a nature journal entry - for June 6th I kept track of the weather, with four drawings of the same patch of sky across the afternoon.

With the promise of rain in the following few days, I made the most of the last of the dry weather with a walk round the fields. So many different grasses - made me realise how little I know about them, even their names. So I've bought a field guide, though of course it's not as easy as you might think to ID them all...

This was the sky before the weather finally broke...

The much-needed rain eventually arrived (we'd had the sunniest/driest May in a long time), and within a couple of days the log pile was sprouting some fabulous fungi - Jelly Ear :-)

When the weather turned warm and sunny once more I decided to repeat my Soundscape experiment of a couple of months ago (no great hardship there!). Sat myself in a sunny spot and listened to all that was going on around me. Not as many different birds as last time, and the wood pigeons weren't quite as constant - a very pleasant and peaceful way to spend a mindful hour or so.

Solstice weekend was warm and humid, and rather hot when the sun came out! I spent some time watching the comings and goings in the flowerbed. Amazing what you see when you take the time to watch a while.

And on some flowers at the front of the house, a not-very-camouflaged speckled bush cricket nymph! Once I'd spotted one of these, they seemed to be everywhere. We usually get one or two of the adults in the house at some point later in the summer, and I assume it's these that I can sometimes hear on my bat detector.

My final journal entry for the month concerned a favourite insect - the lacewing. What's not to love about these delicate little creatures, whose larvae are absolutely ferocious when it comes to dealing with aphids! This one caught my eye as it fluttered about in a shaft of sunlight. It then landed on my wine glass and made its way to the small drop of liquid remaining at the bottom, had a drink then flew off again :-)

And always a treat - a visit from a hedgehog! This one was out and about fairly early in the evening, but looked bright and healthy as it made its way around the edge of the garden, under the shrubs, before disappearing under the fence.

So a great June, despite still being in some kind of pandemic lockdown. Restrictions are easing somewhat (for now anyway) so perhaps it's time for me to visit some local nature reserves at last!

30 Days Wild 2019

It's that wild time of the year again! The Wildlife Trusts' 30 Days Wild happens in June; last year I did a nature journal entry every day, but this time round I thought I'd take a more relaxed approach and simply add things as and when, to complete a spread each week. So here are my pages for this year...

Highlights from week 1 included a wasp beetle rescued from the conservatory, and a woodpigeon with a missing patch of feathers that made it really easy to spot. The swifts are here, but yet again the house martins that have regularly nested in the village for some years have not appeared (second year running -  guess we've lost them, sadly).

Out for a run during week 2 I spotted a muntjac deer down the farm track ahead of me, emerging from a field of beans. It watched me getting closer before bounding off across the track and into the field on the other side. Very wet weather courtesy of Storm Miguel made for some rather soggy garden birds, and a large group of long-tailed tits have been passing through.

Week 3 saw an exciting find for me - a smooth newt, hiding under a plant pot in the greenhouse. It's the first newt I've found in the garden here, and it was an unusual golden-yellow colour. I've since found another one under a log in the log pile, this one the more usual brown colour. A hedgehog tackled a huge earthworm, images caught on the trailcam in the front garden. I also puzzled over the flower preference of bumblebees, and discovered that it's all to do with tongue length!

Another first for me in the final week - a white-letter hairstreak butterfly, that I spotted in a garden during our village Open Gardens afternoon. Then a few days later, one appeared in my own garden! The recent wet weather has resulted in some quite fabulous fungi in the log pile - oyster mushrooms, which I was very tempted to pick and eat (but didn't in the end and now they've been very nibbled by the slugs and snails). Out for a run I saw and heard a corn bunting, with it's jangling-set-of-keys song. Very nice to see this farmland bird, which is in general decline, like so many...

In the log pile...

Here's a couple of new nature journal pages for the new year! My partner was chopping logs for the fire and unearthed one from the bottom of the pile. It has probably been sat in the same place for a couple of years, and had started to mulch down nicely.

The bark was only loosely associated with the rest of the log and came away to reveal a lovely little ecosystem of fungi and invertebrates, some of which I managed to get onto paper!

The tiny tiny spiders are both Linyphiidae species - there are around 280 different species in the UK and it's our largest spider family. These ones were both around 2mm in body length but could scurry away impressively quickly!

The fungi were growing from the mulch at the base of the log. The bigger ones are Glistening inkcaps (Coprinellus micaceus). They look like they've been dusted with sugar - this is the remains of the veil that they have when they first emerge. The tiny fungi on the inside of the bark piece are a Mycena species; I asked for help with an ID for these from the facebook British and Irish Fungi group, and it seems they may be M. archangeliana or perhaps M. pseudocoeticola. 

Amazing what you can find in your back garden - there's always something of interest!

#30DaysWild, days 21-25

Another catch-up post for the enjoyable #30DaysWild!

Day 21 was a visit to a new-to-me nature reserve - Overhall Grove, managed by the local Wildlife Trust and located in a village not too far from me. I've driven through the village many times and noticed the Wildlife Trust signpost, but had never got around to visiting. It's a little gem - woodland, beautifully quiet, muntjac deer barking and buzzards calling.

But the best bit came when I was walking back to the car - a family of foxes, four youngsters and a vixen, on the footpath right in front of me! I was able to quietly watch them for a good while, as they foraged in the leaf litter. The tree canopy was quite dense so the pics I got aren't great, but what a treat that was!

On day 22 I went out for a run for my breath of fresh air, heard yellowhammers calling in the hedgerows and spotted a buzzard. I finished up a couple of nature journal pages from my visit to Overhall Grove.

Day 23 was another rummage around the garden for minibeasts. So many!

Day 24 - I was disappointed that a bug hunting workshop I was going to got cancelled, but was happy to find this strange little mirid bug (Heterotoma species I think), with it's super thick antennae, in the garden. The unexpected free time meant I could go for a run too, and I saw two red kites - don't often get to see them in Cambridgeshire and it's the first time I've seen two together here.

 Day 25 - spot the hopper!

#30DaysWild, days 16-20

Keeping the wild theme going, here's the next batch for #30DaysWild...

Day 16, my new-found spider obsession had me looking around the greenhouse, where I found this intriguing structure - the egg sac of a pirate spider (Ero sp). The sac is about 3mm in length, and is suspended from the greenhouse frame, on the inside, by a silk stalk about 20mm long. Amazing little structure, looks like spun sugar! And since day 16, another one has appeared, though the original hasn't yet hatched... I've yet to find any adult pirate spiders but they are evidently there!

Days 17 and 18 I spent visiting family on a very hot weekend! Too hot really to do anything other than cook and eat barbecued food... But there's always something to see! First is a leafcutter bee's nest hole - I spotted the bee carrying in pieces of leaf to a hole in a concrete fence post. And the dried seed head just made a nice pic!

Day 19. Another hot and sunny day. Spotted some red kites on my drive back to Cambridgeshire from the Midlands. Had a mooch around the garden and found this really pretty little spider (Anelosimus vittatus, identified with help from the British Spider Identification Group on facebook). My list of resident spiders is growing!

 And day 20, some more garden invertebrates, there's just so much out there when you start looking. The moth is a Large Twin-spot Carpet, spider 1 as yet unidentified (maybe Enagplogntha sp. Candy-stripe spider), spider 2 is a running crab spider (Philodromus sp.)

 

 

#30DaysWild, days 6 to 10

Still enjoying a bit a of wild every day (well, mostly!). The weather has been blowing hot and cold (and really blowing too!). Here are days 6 to 10...

Day 6 was a wet one, so I strained and bottled the elderflower cordial (fab with tonic, or indeed vodka and tonic!)

Day 7 was a Wednesday evening run around Portholme Meadow - no pics, but suffice to say that it was glorious, full of flowers and buzzing with insects. I decided I would have to go back on a sunny afternoon...

Day 8 was a walk around the fields, late afternoon. I spotted a roe deer; it's usually muntjacs that I see here in my corner of Cambridgeshire so this was a treat. Followed him round the edge of a field and found a track. Not a great pic, taken on my phone... And later in the evening, a beautiful sunset.

Day 9's wildness was another walk around the fields, this time at dusk. The full moon was rising but rather hazy, but I was very lucky to find a buzzard perched on a bare branch in front of the shimmering moon.

Day 10 was a fabulous return visit to Portholme Meadow in Godmanchester. This actually deserves a full post all of its own at some point in the near future. So much to see! Here are some highlights...

#30DaysWild, days 1 to 5

The Wildlife Trusts in the UK have an annual campaign - 30 Days Wild (#30DaysWild) - in June, to encourage people (and especially families) to spend some time outside in the great outdoors. Here's what I've been up to (batches of 5 days at a time!)

Day 1 - spiders in the garden

I have made two recent purchases, both of which are FAB. One is an excellent new field guide to British Spiders (I had it pre-ordered for ages!). It is really very good, I recommend it. The other is a macro attachment for the camera, a Raynox 150 adapter. It clips onto the front of the camera lens. Takes a bit of getting used to but you can get some half-decent pictures for considerably less than a dedicated macro lens would cost. So the combination of these two things meant that some spider photography was top of the list for #30DaysWild! If you are on facebook I would also recommend looking at the British Spider Identification group, super helpful!

Day 2 - bats!

The bat detector is a DIY kit (you need access to someone who can follow a circuit diagram and who can solder to put it together). Listened to pipistrelles flying around the garden for day 2.

Day 3 - nature journalling
This is what I really enjoy doing - sitting in the sunshine, drawing :-) The pyrocantha shrub in the corner of the garden is covered in blossom at the moment and is also covered with insects...

Day 4 - fungi after rain
These tiny fungi appeared at the edge of the lawn near the log pile after some thundery rain. Unidentified as yet...

Day 5 - elderflowers and a pheasant
Rain and wind forecast for today, and it's quite a bit cooler than it has been too. I collected some elderflowers to make elderflower cordial. The pheasant has been a regular visitor for a few weeks, along with two hen pheasants.

On to the rest of #30DaysWild!