4/365 Reeds and their buntings

04 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature, plants, winter

Tags

#365DaysWild, birding, birds in reed beds, birdwatching, British birds, common reed, Phragmites australis, Reed bunting

Today I was entertained for about two hours watching these little cuties, Reed buntings, swaying back and forth on bendy reeds, stuffing their beaks full of seeds and spitting out the fluff. When the sun finally peeked through the cloud layer, both the handsomely streaked buntings (this is a female) and the tall feather-plumed reeds shone golden, a feast for the eyes and welcome compensation for the hoped-for Bearded tits that failed to show today.

190104 reed bunting

3/365 First slime of the year

03 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, nature, winter

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#365DaysWild, Comatricha nigra, slime, slime mould, slime on umbellifer stem

I simply can’t resist a nice slime. So, during today’s walk along the Penarth to Lavernock coastal path, when I passed a place where I’ve found this particular slime before – it’s called Comatricha nigra, I checked the bottom of two or three old umbellifer stems before finding this superb specimen.

2/365 Feeling guilty

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature, winter

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, British robin, robin, Robin Redbreast

Winter seems finally to have arrived and it was frosty when I arrived at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park early this morning, hoping for a nice long walk before the school holiday crowds arrived. Unfortunately, in my haste to leave home, I forgot to fill my seed container so had nothing to offer the hungry birds. This fluffed-up little Robin was not at all impressed.

190102 robin

1/365 Urban foxes

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, animals, mammal, nature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#365DaysWild, British mammals, fox, male and female fox, pair of foxes, urban fox

To kickstart my birding list for the new year, I walked 8+ miles around Cardiff Bay, logging all the different bird species I could find (they’ll appear on my Birding 2019 page as soon as I finish editing my photos). With mostly blue skies and an abundance of lovely birds, it was a super walk but the highlight wasn’t the birds – it was spotting and then watching these two beautiful foxes lolling about in the grass, enjoying the winter sunshine. Such magnificent creatures!

190101 urban foxes

2019 : the plan

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by sconzani in nature

≈ 8 Comments

Happy New Year to you all!

Like many people, for this new year I am setting myself some new challenges. As well as aiming to walk 1000 miles in 2019 and do more volunteering, I’m also taking up the challenge of re-wilding myself, doing something ‘wild’ every single day. By ‘wild’ I mean exploring the outdoors, birding (I’m aiming for another 200 species this year and will post my list on a separate page), learning more about wildflowers and mini-beasties, going for a walk by the seaside, getting up for the sunrise, anything really that means I’ve got my eyes, ears and mind open and that I’m truly experiencing the natural world around me. And I’m going to share my wild adventures on here.

So, rather than publishing a blog post every day as I have for the last 3 years, most days I’ll just post a ‘wild’ photo, with a sentence or two explaining what I’ve been up to or the significance of that particular photo. I will still write some longer blogs but they will probably only be weekly from now on. I hope you enjoy the new format!

a new year dawns over Cardiff Bay

Everything has beauty

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature, winter

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

#7DaysofWildChristmas, beauty is everywhere, everything has beauty

181231 beauty is everywhere (1)

It was Confucius, I believe, who said ‘Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it’. Well, today, on the last day of my #7DaysofWildChristmas challenge and the last day of 2018, I bring you incontrovertible proof that beauty can be found anywhere. And I’m fairly positive not many people would have spotted this particular piece of gorgeousness.

Can you guess what it is?

181231 beauty is everywhere (4)

Need a clue? I was walking through the meadows at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park when I spotted this in the grass.

181231 beauty is everywhere (5)

It’s … mould growing on rabbit pooh! I presume the liquid droplets are dew rather than something that’s been produced by the mould … or the pooh, but I may be wrong about that. I think you will agree, however, that this is truly a beautiful thing to behold.

181231 beauty is everywhere (6)

New Year Plant Hunt

30 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, plants, wildflowers, winter

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

#7DaysofWildChristmas, #NewYearPlantHunt, British flora, New Year Plant Hunt, wildflowers in bloom, winter-blooming wildflowers

From 29 December to 1 January don’t be surprised if you see people taking photos of blooming wildflowers, puzzling over pictures in ID books, scratching their heads over the differences between one plant species and another. We are the New Year Plant Hunters, doing our best to find and identify as many wildflowers in bloom as possible throughout Britain to help the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland) keep track of what’s happening in the botanical world around us. And you can join in. Go for a walk, list what you find and submit your list on the BSBI website. So, for day 6 of my #7DaysofWildChristmas, I took myself on a walk around Penarth and was delighted to find these 27 species in bloom.

Under the log

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by sconzani in fungi, insects, molluscs, nature, slugs, winter

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#7DaysofWildChristmas, brain fungi, Catinella olivacea, Cogan Wood, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, earthworms, Harvestman, orange slime, slugs, snails, turning over logs, woodlice

The weather was back to grey and drizzly again today so I donned my wet weather gear and headed to Cogan Wood to spend part of day 5 of my #7DaysofWildChristmas challenge turning over a few rotten logs and branches. And what did I find lurking there?

Woodlice; snails both long and rotund; earthworms; luscious balls of orange slime; tiny globular balls that looked like the eggs of something or other; pale little lumps of White or Crystal brain fungi; slugs brown and black; a stripey legged Harvestman; miniscule white mushrooms adorned with drops of water; a young centipede or millipede – I can never be quite sure which is which; dark little cup fungi, black with olive rims (Catinella olivacea) – very pleased with that find; and various other things, the photographs of which were either out of focus or too grainy due to the poor light conditions in the woodland. There’s nothing quite like getting wild and muddy – it was fun!

181229 under the log (11)

Along the Ely

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, walks

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#7DaysofWildChristmas, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay, Ely embankment, Redshank, River Ely, Turnstone

Today, on day 4 of the #7DaysofWildChristmas challenge, my search for the wild took me down to the river – the River Ely, that is – where the river flows in to Cardiff Bay and where the embankment is now edged with tall apartment blocks and where one half of the river is a marina, home to millions of pounds of water craft. It’s a path I walk often but today I was particularly delighted to see my favourite dumpy little waterbirds, the Turnstones, had returned – eleven of them – and they’d brought a friend along, a handsome Redshank that was trying uneasily to snooze while the Turnstones prospected for food to and fro.

181228 turnstones (1)
181228 turnstones (2) 181228 turnstone and redshank (1)

Wild Christmas, day 3

27 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by sconzani in fungi, nature, walks, winter

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

bracket fungus, Cathays Cemetery, Clitocybe fungi, club fungus, coral fungus, earthstar, fungi foray, fungus, inkcap, mushroom, Redlead roundhead, waxcaps

I’m currently taking part in the local Wildlife Trusts’ #7DaysofWildChristmas challenge. This ‘is a week-long challenge to do one wild thing a day from the 25th to the 31st of December’. For me a challenge like this is easy peasy ’cause I try to live my whole life as one long wild challenge but I like to support these initiatives to help to inspire other people to put more Nature and wildness in their lives. Believe me, in a world as crazy as ours currently is, you will feel better for it.

For today’s challenge I spent about four hours at Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery, hunting for fungi to photograph (not forage) in both the old and new sections of the cemetery. I figured that, after all the rain we’ve had recently, I should be able to find one or two nice things. I wasn’t disappointed.