Day 89 - Peacocks and poppies

I found two peacock butterflies in the garden yesterday (on day 89, I'm posting on day 90).  It's nice to see a few at last. Pa tells me there were 30 on the buddleia whilst the sun was shining today, but I missed those!

Other nature based moments on my travels yesterday included bright sunshine on ferns...

Spotting a lovely line of sycamore and beech trees...

and noticing these back lit poppies...

It was breezy so the poppy just above the centre looks like it is on a fire a little here!!

Day 88 - Wildplay

I did a day of Wildplay today, covering my pregnant boss who is now struggling with the demands of a day in the woods whilst carrying extra weight!  It was one of the best Wildplay days I've ever done. By "Wildplay" in this post I refer to the particular Wildplay event we run where parents leave children with us for a day of playing outdoors.

These days are child led and the children always love den building and fires the most and are generally happy spending the day entertaining themselves in the woods, though we do make all sorts of activity suggestions and let them tell us their ideas too so the days can be quite varied.

Today, we had a lovely group of 4 children who had a great day of den building and really enjoyed whittling (with potato peelers). There was a lot of imaginative play too today which was nice, and I've had two helicopter rides and been involved in a war ;)

One boy enjoyed whittling sticks so much he spent quite some time 'peeling'  a whole log for us all to sit on at the camp fire later on.  The other two boys mostly whittled swords and guns whilst the girl was quite happy building her own den.

It was a really lovely day of outdoor fun! The boys like to do a bit of mud face painting but today they tried squashed blackberry face paint and loved it!

blackberry face painting.. we collected many more but whole berries were smeared across faces!!

R loved whittling. This was his first time at Wildplay but he had a good day so I hope we'll see him again another time.

The den built by the girl, she was inside giving it a test run.

Belts of weapons! Various swords and guns at the ready.

We struggled to find many dry sticks or kindling but the shavings pile from R's peeled log was plenty to get a fire going with a firesteel and we just managed to keep it going with a few collected twigs for about 15 minutes for some marshmallows!

We only had mini marshmallows but they were still ok for toasting. I can never join in with the marshmallow fun, being vegetarian. I'm sure I could get veggie ones somewhere, but I haven't found them yet! The children whittle their own sticks to toast them on.

The boys den, not actually a den but a helicopter!  We even had proper safety briefings about seatbelts, exits, not smoking and emergency procedures before taking off.

We (by which I mean just the two adults!) made clay mushrooms!

Before we packed away for the day, we had to check to see how waterproof the shelters were! The boys just wanted to get a bit wet really!

I love Wildplay days like this, when the children all play nicely together and have lots of fun :)

Day 87 - Wild Wednesday: Meadow Magic

The last Wild Wednesday with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. This week the them was 'Meadow Magic' and I was the only volunteer who could make it so there were only two of us to run the event but luckily for us, it wasn't as busy as the previous four Wild Wednesdays have been, so we managed fine.

I didn't take many photos at all as I was either at the desk for greeting and signing in families or running the sweep netting or fire sessions so I didn't have chance to take photos of many of the activities. Today we made shieldbug shields (colour in an A4 shieldbug, cut it out and add a strip of card to the back to make it into a 'shield'!), butterfly feeders, painted pebble bugs, cooked bread on the camp fire (with optional honey for dipping). There was also bug hunting with sweep nets (on my session we caught a butterfly, three caterpillars, a few shield bugs and spiders and a lot of froghoppers) and there was also a 'meadow trail' where children learned about the food plants of several butterflies and moths.

Whilst I was at the desk, this shieldbug fell (or was blown) out of the tree next to me, and fell to the desk with a thud!  I think it was slightly dazed, but it did recover and was put back on the tree.

It was a good day - and despite looking threatening a few times, it didn't rain on us! I will look forward to volunteering for future Wild Wednesdays and I'm glad I've been able to help each week this summer.  I'm shattered this evening, though I think that has more to do with my 1am bedtimes this week the nights before full days of Wildplay.  I could really do with a day off tomorrow but I said I'd do another day of Wildplay for SWT as my boss there is seven months pregnant and beginning to struggle with the all outdoors days!

Day 86 - Wildife Watch

Today I led a Wildlife Watch session for SWT.  This is an indoor event, at a visitor centre and is for families to drop in during two 2 hour sessions. I didn't get to spend any time outdoors beyond putting out / getting in the trail pictures but I was doing nature crafts and helping children to 'go wild' so I think it counts!

The morning was quite busy with 13 children attending and staying for almost the whole two hours but then it started raining at lunch time and I just had 2 girls who came for an hour and a half of the afternoon session.

We painted rock bugs (the children had to go out and find their pebble before they could paint). One boy collected several pebbles and painted them all to build a caterpillar, one girl designed her own bug and ladybirds were popular. This was done by a little girl but photographed terribly due to red on red and the light! 

As well as the rock bugs we had a trail set out (10 animal photos the children had to find and identify), an Alphabet Nature Challenge (find something in nature beginning with every letter of the alphabet - tricky!) and a colour matching with nature egg box activity (paint the inside of egg box in different colours then find things in those colours - like --> this <--)

This was the classroom after I tidied the morning chaos away and washed and refilled the paint pots...

The two girls who came in the afternoon had their own idea for an egg box craft and produced these pompom caterpillars (with a little help from the grown ups!)

My own bit of time outdoors was a short walk in the drizzle to collect in the ten trail pictures at the end of the day.

Those coots all rushed up to me but they were all disappointed as I didn't have any food!

Day 85 - A quick walk

For today's bit of time outdoors, I took my mother's dog for a short walk and whilst she was smelling the smells, I went snapping the natures! 

Fallen horse chestnut and holly leaf

The ash is laden with keys!

Rosehips

Froghopper

I noticed the little froghopper and, after stopping to take a photo, I spotted this parent bug on the next leaf.

They're small, 7-9mm.

I put him back on the same leaf.

The leaves are changing colour and falling

cranefly

A lovely half hour of outdoors :)

Day 84 - Red Berries and Ripples

A wet and windy day.

Red berries and ripples...

I was pleased that I managed to capture a spherical droplet splashing up out of the ripple right of the centre.

Day 83 - Birdfair and the Rutland Belle

An early start this morning for the 2ish hour drive to Rutland Water for Birdfair. It wasn't the greatest of days really, the two days before had been busy and stressful due to some serious computer problems and I had a migraine which lasted all weekend so I had to go to Birdfair with a banging headache, and then there was the heat. Oh my was it warm. The marquees were awful and outside wasn't any better. Combined with my headache, I found it hard to muster much enthusiasm for anything yesterday so it was a case of catching a couple of talks I wanted to see, buying a few books I wanted to buy, visiting the stands I particularly wanted to visit - which included the optics marquees to do some binocular related research as I'd like to buy new ones - and then getting out of there early! I didn't really take any photos during the day - it was so hot, I couldn't be bothered to lift the camera - that's how bad it was, haha!

I was rather ready to go home and have a shower really but I'd booked an evening boat cruise on the water with Nick Baker and made plans to eat dinner at Wildwood Kitchen in Oakham after enjoying the food there last year, so on leaving the Birdfair I went into Oakham and then spent a while killing time by wandering around Wilkinson's and a book shop, trying too look like I wasn't just there to enjoy the air conditioning!After a good meal at Wildwood, I headed for Whitwell Harbour.

At 6:30 the group boarded the Rutland Belle, just after showers and thunder had passed over.

The sunshine returned for the cruise.

From the boat, we mostly saw gulls and terns

but also saw a heron and several little egrets.

The highlight for me was, of course, the ospreys. I've not seen them before.  We saw five perched on the nesting poles and surrounding trees.  One of them went hunting...

and we saw it swoop down to the water and make off with a fish!

Brilliant!  I can highly recommend a trip on the Rutland Belle!

It was about 10:30pm when I got home and I'd left the house at 7:45am so it was a long day but a good one! I must make an effort to visit Rutland Water properly at some point, I've been there three times but never once set foot in a hide there or explored the water itself!