30 Days Wild – Day 27 – Let sleeping ducks lie

A very quick one today. Spotted a bunch of ducks sleeping by the lake. But the moment I stopped to look at them, they were up. 

Waddling immediately towards me like some form of ravenous zombie horde. There’s a lesson in there I’m sure. 

They weren’t the only hungry birds. The poor weather had the martins and swallows low to the water, and a bedraggled swan eying my cereal bar. 

Three days left. It’s been a good month so hopefully a couple more surprises await. 

30 Days Wild – Day 26 – Aberlady Bay

Day 26 is really a second part to Day 25, coming from the first ever Local Nature Reserve, established in 1952. Aberlady Bay.

Monday Bird of the Week No.48 – Snipe

Snipe, probing away
Old Moor, Feb 2016

If you like your birds small, round, with an extravagant bill and beautiful plumage, then this weeks’ Monday Bird of the Week is for you. It is the Snipe.

30 Days Wild – Day 25 – ‘Ane wounderful crag…’

Day 25 was a packed day. But we’ll start with Tantallon Castle and something great and white on the horizon…

30 Days Wild – Day 24 – Water of Leith

For Day 24 I went looking for Dippers along the Water of Leith outside Edinburgh. Once again, I found something other than what I was looking for…

30 Days Wild – Day 23 – From the train

It’s easy to think you cannot possibly have moments of wildness from a train. After all, what is there but a carriage, and people? 

But as it all whizzes past an array of habitats flash before your eyes. Meadow, field, forest and hedgerow. Coastal seas and broad rivers. Lakes and ponds and urban sprawl. 

So watching wildlife from the window provides a series of truly random and rapid moments, like a film with most of the cells cut out. Prancing deer are intercut with buzzards scratching for earthworms. 

Fields full of corvids, pigeons and starlings pass. But also glimpses of rabbits and hares. Small flocks of finches. Wheatears and Wagtails. Bunches of waders. 

And if you can glance out to sea, gulls and gannets dance and soar over the grey water. 

So never believe a train means you are stuck with the manmade, the wild moments are all on the other side of the glass. 

30 Days Wild – Day 22 – On old adages

The bible says “Seek and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7). But there’s another old adage that if you want to find something, simply stop looking. So which is true? Let’s find out…

30 Days Wild – Day 21 – Still no orchids

With little time and no moments of good fortune to fall back on, it’s a quick one today. 

30 Days Wild – Day 20 – What is a moment?

I struggle to believe we are already two-thirds of the way through 30 days Wild. I struggle even more to believe it’s nearly midway through 2017.

For Day 20 we get two small but lovely moments to bookend the day.

30 Days Wild – Day 19 – Meadow

There is a small wildflower meadow a minute outside my office, but I never go and walk in it. I’m always drawn to the lake. For Day 19, I changed that.