My walk this week took me wandering round the garden on a bright August day. I was sitting watching the birds flutter and fight over the feeder outside my studio where I was weaving and thinking about the similar aural textures of my activity and that of the birds.
If you listen to the soundscape below you may understand what I mean, but it could just be my imagination. Being able to get out, or at least look at, the natural environments around me is essential to my wellbeing.Continue reading
My walk this week follows high spring tides on my local marshes and looks at the deposits they left as well as the new wildflower and marsh grass growth coming through with Spring.
Bluebells en route
Spring tides occur twice a month every month, as do neap tides, not just in the Spring. The term “spring tide” is given to those tides that have the greatest difference in height between high and low tide, but the highest tidesContinue reading
My walk this week was taken in our local park on Christmas Day when the park was almost empty of other people but lively with the sound of birds. I had the idea that the birds thought it might be Spring, perhaps influenced by the warm weather.
Whatever time of year they thought it was, the geese were in flight, but I only spotted them in the photograph above after I got home again.
This was an impromptu walk and as such all the photos and sound recording I did was on my phone, and that is OK, thoughContinue reading
Like this solitary crow, I enjoy my solitary walks, but this is far from the only species of fauna I found when in Scotland last month. I approached it quietly to try and get a closer shot but was spotted, naturally, and it it took to the air, flying across the bay to meet its partner.
There is a quiet bay, an old disused harbour, along the shore from us where the gulls and oystercatchers – and on this occasion, swans – gather and sit quietly on the water or by its edge andContinue reading
My walk this week follows the rules and my local marsh footpath down to the old St Teilo’s churchyard. It is a walk I love and have done (and posted about) many times. But there is always something new to see as the the conditions are always different. One of the first things you come upon when leaving the park above the marshes is this metal gate notice telling you to “KEEP TO THE FOOTPATH”.
I’m not one for sticking to the rules but I am sure that, like me, most people walking here do keep to the footpath because it takes you were you want to go and follows a very attractive route.Continue reading
In the park woodland the undergrowth is seeing an overgrowth and we have had so much unusually good weather lately that the water level in the park pond has dropped dramatically – the bullrushes are going well but the mud is being exposed.
Where once there were bluebells, now there is a rapidly thickening jungle of bracken. Above, in the oak trees a son thrush sings and it’s little one (?) down on the ground looks slightly bewilderedContinue reading
Looking down isn’t always the best thing to do – certainly not if you want to see where you are going – but it is also necessary if you want to be able to see the details underfoot of where you are. In the case of the lambs in today’s featured image, looking back down the hill at me is a matter of curiosity, the curiosity of the young.
Their mothers had led them up the hill away from me as I approached on the descending lane, but they halted half way up to check me out. I too halted many times on my walk, first to look andContinue reading
In this my third and last post for my walk this week I am looking at some of what is left behind by both recent weather conditions and humans – the ice and jetsam scattered in the river and around the frozen woodland in a semi urban / industrial area.
The ice was not yet melting but had created strange bubble-like forms around old reeds at the river’s edge. Also at the edge of the Afon Llan was a collection of abandoned shopping trolleys tangled up with bits of wood swept downstream and caught up in their old metal mesh.Continue reading
Still reporting back after our holiday in south west Scotland, my photos this week from my walks there focus initially on some of the wildlife to be seen if your lucky enough.
June was a month where the young were getting adventurous and exploring away from their parents. This young roe deer came down to the beach in front of us wandered around in curiosity for a while before obviously hearing the call of its mother and bolting off to find her again.Continue reading
Back in the park again at the end of my walk from June 2010 to our local salt marshes and at the other end of the park to the oak woods. The park has two playing fields as well as a rugby ground next to it – these plus the oak woods, a playground, Continue reading