I had a brief encounter with some wildlife at work today... I was cutting a few willow branches and stripping off the leaves for use at my forest school sessions next week, when a couple of coot chicks suddenly came running out of the water and over to me... quite fearless, they came right up to me!
A parent coot and a third chick soon appeared too and the adult led the chicks back to the water.
This evening I went out for a local walk over the ground where I grew up.That's not unusual, but I've never been on a guided walk here before. I joined Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and a group of other people to enjoy a walk over the hills looking out for curlews.
It was a lovely evening for it and we did see some curlews. I know this land rather well, it being my childhood playground, and I often come here to spot curlews as an adult so I didn't go along on the walk for the curlews really but it's always good to take a guided walk, there's always something to learn, even about areas you know well, and I learned a couple of things about curlews too.
I'm not going to say a lot more, the photos can do the talking...
60 hectares of land here was destroyed by a moorland fire (a fire caused by wild campers, which started on my birthday last year and burned for a couple of weeks) and I was very interested to hear more about the effects of the fire on the land and plans for it's restoration - though that is going to take a very long time of course.
The fire began in the woods beneath the rocks - you can see some fire damage to the trees and ground in these photos - but quickly spread from the woods over to the moorland behind me as I took these photos from the top. I haven't included photos of the burnt moor but it covers a huge area.
What was your random act of wildness today?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to leave a comment :)