30 Days Wild: My first 12 random acts of wildness

Even though I spend a lot of time outside and I am lucky enough to have wilderness right on my doorstep, I’ve still needed to remind myself to do something wild each day. It’s brought home the fact that many children and adults don’t regularly have the opportunity to come into contact with nature. I can’t imagine a life without nature. Nature is a huge part of my life. In fact, it is my life. I love seeing the influx of social updates by people from all walks of life sharing their wild activities. If we can teach the children of today the importance of nature, then maybe these adults of tomorrow will fight to protect it.


This is a log of my first my first 12 'Random Acts of Wildness':



1. Smelt the wildflowers growing below the canopy in the wood.



2. Sat peacefully under the trees for 10 minutes, listening to the gentle hum of insects pollinating the wildflowers around me.




3. Caught the hornet that was flying around the house and dare myself to get as close as possible to her to take some photos.



4. Prodded some jelly-like jew’s ear fungus growing on a rotting stick.




5. Crept up to an open-fronted nest box to peak at the robin eggs nestled inside.




6. Walked through a rape seed field which was full of beautiful wild poppies in the evening sun.




7. Visited the local nature reserve, North Cave Wetlands, to watch the abundance of bird life, including hundreds of black-headed gull, artic turns, shelduck, shovelers, and gadwall.




8. Filled my new Ring Pull bird feeder from Living with birds and put it out for the garden birds. I’m running a giveaway for one of them here.



9. Took a close up photo of a vibrant, flowering fox glove in the wood.


10. On the upturned root of a tree I discovered a mossy wrens nest.




11. Walked through the long, wet grass in my wellington boots.






12. We took in a baby magpie, now named Magnus, at around a week old. He’s now fully feathered and learning to fly (I’ll blog about him soon). We have hand reared several orphaned corvids (members of the crow family) over the years. I posted about them here.


So why only 12 Random Acts of Wildness when there have been 16 days in June? Well, here come the excuses- for three of the days I didn't do anything wild. Shock, I know! I was just simply too busy doing other things and didn't have time to dedicate to the challenge. For a moment, I thought about sticking some extra images in from May, but as well as being dishonest it would have been misleading. It proves that doing something wild everyday is difficult; even when you make the effort to plan wild moments into your everyday schedule, life can get in the way. It also proves that we need to make time for getting closer to nature, all the time, not just when this fantastic campaign from The Wildlife Trusts is running.

I'm going to make an extra special effort to do something wild everyday for the rest of the month, starting tonight!

Follow me on Instagram to see what I get up to 'in the wild'.