Can you spot this amazing creature featured on the Woodland Trust site as one of ten strange creatures?
Known as a Water Bear or Moss Piglet this eight-legged creature can survive in outer space! They feed on small insects and can grow up to 1.5mm in length. Amazingly they always have the same number of cells in their bodies meaning that their cells just get bigger as they grow rather than dividing to increase in size.
Look for them in damp places, stone walls where there are mosses and lichens.
Ensuring part of the garden has a wild feel to it has always been in my planning and with events this year I have now managed to fulfil my aims. Part of the front garden has a hedge and low wall with shallow soil as it is over a drain pipe. Any form of planting has been difficult so it seemed like the ideal place for some wild flowers.
After clearing the overgrown grass and edging the lawn I sowed a number of seeds.
Hopefully it will become a colourful place for wildlife. After just a few weeks progress is being made and it looks like this...
Lots of little seedlings already beginning to appear and hopefully by next year there will be a display like this one I walked past today.
So try and find a small patch of garden or a plant pot and sow some seeds to attract wildlife.
This week is National Insect Week so perhaps we should get outside and start looking for some insects.
There is absolutely loads of information at THIS site including videos, discovery pages, free booklet/magazine and so much more so why not take a look?
How about seeing how many ladybirds you can find? This sheet will help.
And finally why not make an insect home?
These are a few in my garden but THIS * site has some great instructions on how you can make your own.
Here we go the first day of hopefully many random acts of wildness lay ahead and the weather couldn't be better for getting outdoors.
If you haven't signed up with the Wildlife Trust initiative yet you can do so HERE and get a free downloadable pack of ideas. Read more about it HERE.
Today was the first chance to see the Forest School site since the end of March and how it's changed!
The whole of spring has passed and everything is growing wildly. Some of the areas that suffered from the winter rain have begun to recover but many areas we regularly use have become overgrown.
The fruit bushes are beginning to produce fruit but the pond area has dried out and become a little lost in the grass.
Many areas are looking magnificent, the beech tree with its huge green canopy and many flowers around the site and in the meadow area.
A random act of wildness challenge for today is to look up at the clouds. What shapes can you see? Why not try sketching them and turn them into the objects of your imagination. Or take a photo and use some drawing software to make your picture.
We would love to see your pictures and to hear about what you are getting up to. You can add a comment to the blog below or Tweet with @LyndonGreenJnr #30DaysWild
The Trusts have a variety of sites to visit and explore the outdoors, perhaps nearest is Elmdom Manor next to Elmdom Park which has woodland, a meadow, ponds and an old walled garden.
(please note at time of writing many Trust sites and carparks are not open. Where a site is open they would ask you to only visit if you are able to walk to the site from your home. Please follow government guidance to Stay Safe and Stay at Home.)
Their websites have a wide range of information about habitats and the plants and animals that live on their reserves. So how can you get involved?
Each year they run an initiative 30 Days Wild during June. Forest School is usually involved with this and activities are based around the challenges they have. See pictures below.
Individuals and families can also sign up and keep a diary of their random acts of wildness.
I've usually taken part too and perhaps most successful has been the wildlife pond and trail camera installed in the garden.
The pond was simple just a plastic box sunk into the ground with some soil in the bottom with gravel over the top and some pond weed and a stick so anything that falls in usable to get out. In Forest School we've done a very similar thing with buckets. It's amazing what comes to live there, tiny creatures, hoverfly larvae, newts, frogs and more. The children always love going to see what is in the pond. But if you can't go to this why not try just a jar of water outside. After a few weeks you'll find something living in it.
The trail cam has been amazing. I'm really surprised at what manages to find its way to our garden.
Here are just a few of our highlights.
Hopefully this will inspire you to have some random acts of wildness and don't worry too much about the whole 30 days just have fun😀
Spending time outdoors is fun. We all appreciate a little bit of sunshine, a warm breeze, hearing birdsong or a refreshing summer rain. But learning a little about nature also helps to connect us to our surroundings and to feel a part of our wider world.
Research is also revealing to us the health benefits of being out in nature through things like a simple walk, forest bathing or quiet moments of mindfulness.
Whatever your motivation for spending time outdoors there are plenty of places to find encouragement and ideas.
Here is the first organisation and links to their materials to help you along your way.
The Wild Network website has many ideas including a weekly set of challenges which can be done either in or outdoors. I particularly like their animal clothes challenge. What animal can you make your clothes into? Here's an idea:-
They also have walking bingo cards, a different one each week and a free film which introduces how the wild network was started.
The challenge I've taken is to build an obstacle course for a wild animal.
Over time quite a few creatures have visited our garden, i'll share them in future posts, but a the moment we have a couple of squirrels that come each morning.
Now these squirrels aren't very bright. To stop them taking the bird food I put up a nut feeder just for them with a lid.
What did they do? They ate it! Don't believe me? Here's the evidence or what's left of it.
So without any high hopes I decided to build a squirrel run. The plan was for them to run along the top of the fence, along a rope to the first tray of nuts. Then along the rope and onto the arch to a basket with more nuts suspended from the arch.
Needless to say it didn't work out like this so the run was adapted and here is a short video to show you how it all went.
An adaptation of the run is under construction. The magpie ate all the nuts in the tray and then the squirrel discovered running up the stick.
If you feel inspired it would be great to hear how you got on. Have fun😃
Gnorman tells me it's been awfully quiet in Forest School for some time now. He wonders where everyone has gone and why no one tries to find him anymore. I've tried to explain but he doesn't really get it.
He says all Harrold wants to do is push his wheelbarrow about and that's just no fun.
So I suggested we could play 'Where's Gnorman?' online. All Gnorman has to do is go and hide. I'll take a photo and we'll post to see if anyone can spot him in the photo.
He thinks this is a great idea and looks very much to hearing from you all.
Watch future posts and see if you can find Gnorman in the photo.
By the way he tells me someone has been creeping into Forest School and is feeding the birds so that's good. Hopefully they will be nesting now with lots of young ones to come over the rest of the Springtime.
The sunflower is a large inflorescence, this means the flower head is actually made of many tiny flowers called florets. Central florets look like the centre of a normal flower while the outer florets look like yellow petals and together they make up a "false flower". This natural design helps insects and birds to easily see the sunflower and after pollination every little flower or floret produces a seed.
This year we have challenged all our Forest Schoolers to grow a giant sunflower. That means by the end of the year we should have somewhere in the region of 400 growing on site. Hopefully this will lead to a mini sunflower meadow on site but we will have to see how thing go.
The first step of course is planting the seed. We have chosen the variety Russian Giant and hope to see them achieve somewhere near to their 3 metres in height.
By early April every child had planted their seed and we were beginning to find out how many had not germinated. As children came out to check on them another seed was quickly planted.
Then came the warm weather. After the cool wet lead up to Easter we were glad of our SolarDome for getting things started but the heat when the Spring sunshine gets going is just too much for the young plants and the quickly had to be moved outside.
This led to another problem only seen minimally inside, the full scale massacre of a slug attack.
Nearly a whole group lost their sunflowers and others well on their way to 50cm were scythed down.
The children's solution was to raise the pallets they were standing on off the ground but many more will need to be planted to replace those lost.
Using the iPod and Snapseed app has allowed children in Year 6 to experiment with creating artwork in Forest School as part of their Cornerstones Galleries project. Here is a short video to showcase some of their work.
