At first I wasn’t sure about including #30dayswild on this blog, because this blog is about education and teaching. But then I decided that #30dayswild is all about nature, and nature is science, and science is very much a part of the national curriculum, so it does belong here.
June 1st
Our 30 days wild adventure started in a spectacular (and unplanned) way when we heard a terrible bumping crashing sound, followed by silence, followed by a panicked fluttering sound. We called out a gas engineer who took our gas fire to pieces and pulled out a terrified wood pigeon, who had somehow managed to fall down our chimney. We set him (or maybe her) down in our back garden with some food and water, and kept an eye on him. It took him a while and we were starting to get worried, but after about 15 minutes he fluffed out his feathers and flew off into the trees. We’re still not sure how it happened as we have a cap on our chimney, but we’ve made a note to check and make sure the cap isn’t damaged as we don’t want other birds to suffer the same fate.
June 2nd
The sky was beautiful. It was covered in thick black cloud, but once it got dark and the moon started peeking between the clouds, it was really quite breathtaking. We spent a few minutes just watching the clouds blow by. Before bed I opened the window ready for the following day’s wild thing.
June 3rd
I woke up to the dawn chorus, and although it was earlier than I would usually wake up, it was a really relaxing sound to wake up to (and to fall back to sleep to before being woken at my more usual time by my alarm).
We always have lots of bees in our garden. I like bees and always insist that we have the sort of flowers they like in the garden. In the late afternoon I watched one of the bees circling round, looking for his home – a little hole in between the flowers on our front drive. I looked him up and identified him as a tawny mining bee.
June 4th
My husband and I went for a walk in a local park. We saw the usual swans, geese, grebes, black-headed gulls and moorhens, as well as rabbits, squirrels and even some cows! As we were leaving we spotted a duck we’d never seen before. My first thought was, “What an ugly duck”, but the more I watched it, the more I liked it. He was standing at the edge of the lake, well apart from the other ducks, and the crest on top of his head stood right on end when they came near. I took his picture so could look it up when I got home, although there was no chance of forgetting what it looked like. It turned out to be a Muscovy duck.
June 5th
I thought I was going to do my wild thing early today. I went for my shower and spotted a big black spider scuttling across the bathroom floor. I was going to put him outside so he didn’t accidentally get squished, but by the time I’d found a glass and a sheet of paper to slide underneath, he had found somewhere safe to hide and I’ve not seen him since.
Following that failure, the rest of the day became a tricky one. I arrived at work at 8am and didn’t finish until 7.30pm. By the time I’d eaten, prepared my lessons for the following week and done some housework it was almost midnight! I went outside with my husband, and we spent the last few minutes of the day standing in our back garden. It was a clear night, so we looked at the stars, listened to the wind rustling the leaves of our cherry tree, and watched the moths fluttering by.
Birds, bees, ducks and moths – this week has been all about the winged things.
