In my last blog, I introduced the idea of a nature walk as a way of engaging with the natural world. It was something I did at my primary school and with my mother Jessie who, as a teenager, ran a group called the Woodlanders – a nature study group.
I’ve done the nature walk described in my previous blog many times. To encourage you to venture out again, here are a few more pictures and a short reel from my recent experiences.
If you walk slowly and try not to step on twigs or make other noises, you may glimpse deer. Here are three roe deer that had been sheltering under a yew tree, just about to depart.
The pheasant is a bird I don’t usually see until I’ve gotten too close, when it springs dramatically into the air from the grass and reeds where it’s been hiding. This male pheasant, however, seemed unconcerned as it strutted around establishing its territory.
In the last blog, we looked at a stone and turned it over to reveal slugs, beetles, and woodlice. On one occasion when I turned over a stone, this toad walked out. No doubt I had disturbed it in its larder!
A sure sign that spring is approaching is when your eyes are drawn to a shape hovering close to the ground before settling. This shape turned out to be a bumble bee queen searching for a place to make her nest.
Another harbinger of spring is the drumming of a woodpecker, and here we managed to capture one in action.
When people make a second trip along their nature walk, they typically discover more to see, hear, and sometimes smell – like flower blossoms or even what I think of as the stale beer scent left by a fox.
These surprises on subsequent visits often lead to more explorations and discoveries, and before you know it, you’re identifying the area as your own patch on the planet.
With this in mind, I’ve established a new section in the Archives called “A Patch on the Planet” But instead of just taking photographs, we’ve explored the area with a drone!
I plan to run this project throughout the year, having made our first drone flight in very early spring. We’ve scheduled additional flights at regular intervals to observe how the patch transforms with the seasons.
The video produced from our drone flight has been condensed into about four minutes, and there are two ways to watch it. You can simply click and watch the drone’s journey, or for more information, download the “stop and chat” sheet. This allows you to pause at various points where I explain more about what you’re seeing.
There may also be a second component to “The Patch on the Planet” where people worldwide can send photographs of plants and animals from their own patches, weaving them together into a global portrait of life on our planet.
If you’d like to participate, regardless of where you are in the world, just send in about four pictures with brief descriptions, and we can begin building this collaborative vision.
Roe Deer
Male Pheasant
Toad
