COVID19 Lock Down Daily Nature Notes.

I started writing some daily nature notes almost at the beginning of lock down, a little like the government I was late with the idea! I actually can’t recall if it was late March or 1st April when I decided it would be nice to do, and I thought I would hang them in the window of the front room so they could be seen from the street by those taking the ‘coronawalks’. Anyway let’s say I started on April Fool’s Day, just because I'm a fool for not remembering!


At first I hung up up a piece of cardboard, wrote the notes on paper and pinned them to the cardboard.

 






It wasn’t long before I realised it would be better to do them on a small blackboard, and since my birthday pops up quite soon into April, I asked for a blackboard & some coloured chalks. Luckily they came! And not only that, I received a card from a family who I didn’t know, that had been reading the paper notes and saying how much they had learned. I did a little fist pump, it was all I wanted to hear that people were reading them, enjoying them and perhaps engaging with nature either for the first time or a little more.

I started to embellish the notes once I got going on the blackboard, it's actually quite nice to sketch in chalks.

Towards the end of April I mentioned my notes on a group WhatsApp chat with my fellow football buddies. They said, "we need to see these notes, we’re missing out!" So the next thing was to also post the notes on WhatsApp every morning, if they were late, I knew about it!

When we got to June and lock down was starting to ease, I thought it would be nice to carry on through the annual #30DaysWild challenge until the end of the month. So here we are:

Pictures posted from 21 April 2020….


The first is terrible; spelling mistake & blurry photo (bad night?).





 






On in to May:

























And so to June, and 30 Days Wild, an initiative created by The Wildlife Trusts that I have taken part in each year. The notes occasionally contained something to try as a 'random act of wildness'.

























.... a few more to come!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nature Notes during COVID19 - the forgotten pictures!

Image
I can't believe I forgot to post the rest of the pictures from my daily Nature Notes collection of 2020. See my previous blog post. Anyway they are here now, plus the bonus Advent Nature Notes in the lead up to lockdown Christmas 2020. Better late then never! They start with the tail end of #30DaysWild. After #30DaysWild and lockdown started to lift, I only posted notes at the weekend, unless something remarkable occurred such as 'Flying Ant Day'. At the end of summer, after Hen Harrier Day, I started to post notes about the changing seasons through the autumn lockdown. Instead of an advent calendar l decided to do Advent Nature Notes, with a Christmassy theme. And following Advent we had the Twelve Days of Christmas Nature Notes. I continue to occasionally post some nature messages in the window, but my COVID19 Lockdown Nature Notes have ended, if only it was this easy to end the pandemic and focus on healing the planet. Please do your bit to help nature's recovery and
Read more

Determined Lapwing & A Wild Goose Chase!

Image
Peewit, Lapwing, Green Plover, Vanellus vanellus , whatever you call them, they're in big population decline here in the UK. I'm a scientist, so here's a graph showing the data from BTO that proves it (y axis is a smoothed population index & green indicates 85% confidence limits).  Adult Lapwing showing off gorgeous feather colours & a jaunty crest. Origins of the Lapwing name hail from Middle English lappewinke and lapwyngis , and back even earlier to the Old English  hleapewince , all of which mean 'leap' and 'wince' or 'waver, move rapidly'. It's descriptive, as the Lapwing appear to make a big leap  when they take to the air, and when on the ground they scuttle about quite rapidly. In that respect I'd hardly call them wavering, as I shall highlight below. However, when they're foraging they pause to listen, and patter on the mud using a foot, which increases their success rate in finding and catching invertebrates.
Read more

Otter-ly Brilliant!

Image
I must have spent so much time out in the Broads lately that Otters now think I am part of the landscape! Let me explain how, for a brief moment today, I became an Otter whisperer. I was out with my new toy (a parabolic microphone) when I bumped, yes literally, bumped into an Otter mum with her three cubs! Here are some of the recordings and a few photos. At first not really knowing whether to keep recording sound or take photos, I ended up doing both, sort of. I edited out where I dropped the microphone to the floor! It was all happening fast and I was trying not to be over excited, so some of the photos are a little blurry (the camera was on the wrong setting initially), and the microphone was not in an ideal position! Was I going to miss the moment? I heard the whistles/squeaks/screams ahead of me, and I wasn't really sure what it was at first, then right in the middle of the path I could see brown shapes wriggling in the long grass. I couldn't believe my luck when the
Read more