wild camping & nightjars: 30 day wild - week 4

Cross posting from Suffolk Wildlife Trust blog.

It's the last week of the Wildlife Trust's 30 Day nature challenge - one random act of wildness every day for the month of June. I've loved making more time for nature in my every day life, and I hope you have too!

Day 22: This morning I awoke in my sleeping bag lying amongst the long long grass in my garden. Certainly not the most wild of locations for my wild camp, but certainly an interesting urban experience - calling herring gulls and nearby taxi drivers were just a couple of things that awoke me from my slumber. Why on earth did I do this, I hear you cry? It was summer solstice, so the perfect night to spend under the stars (though I might go somewhere a little less urban next time!)

Day 23: I decided to join a Woodbridge Wildlife Group guided walk in Blaxhall common to look for nightjars and glow worms. Unfortunately no glow worms found, but we did hear lots of mechanical churring from the nightjars, and saw one fly across the heath!

Day 24: An exploration of the Ipswich river footpath out of town. Here I found lots of urban wildlife, including these great cinnabar moth caterpillars. These caterpillars rely on common ragwort as their food plant and are very distinctive with their stripy bodies. Their adult form is beautiful too with striking red and black patterned wings. Take a look at them here.

Day 25: Today Team Hedgehog walked the Orwell 25 – a 25 mile walk along the Orwell Estuary, to raise awareness and funds for hedgehogs! We saw lots of house martins, a lesser stag beetle, heard turtle doves and I learnt how to identify two plants, Hare’s-foot Clover and Dittander. Check out how you can help hedgehogs here.

Day 26: Today I could really feel my muscles so didn't venture too far for todays random act of wildness. Instead I decided to admire the lovely blue sky and have a go at identifying the different cloud formations.

Day 27: Today I had a quick rummage around the garden and found lots of garden spider nests full of spiderlings, one in the grass with webbing wrapped round lots of grass and clover, and two in our lavender bush. A quick hit of nature time doesn't need to take much effort, why not get out in your garden for a few minutes whilst the kettles boiling?

Day 28: A garden night safari! Out I went with my bat detector and torch to see what I could find after hours. Unfortunately no bats seen (or heard), but I did find some cool spiders (that didn’t like the light), a large garden snail, and lots of micro moths amongst the long grass.

Day 29: After a day in the office I was heading to London to attend the People’s Trust for Endangered Species 40th birthday celebrations, so I had a quick trip to Hyde Park before the event. It was packed full of people, but it didn’t take long to find a wilder spot with longer grass and some lovely trees, including a lovely weeping beech tree!

Day 30: Following my slight disappointment of not finding glow worms at Blaxhall Common, I decided I'd have another go at hunting these awesome little beasts down. Today I headed to a chalk pit in Cambridgeshire and it didn't disappoint! It didn't take long to find two little glow worms with their little light bulb butts in the undergrowth. Despite their name, glow worms are actually beetles and it is the females that glow to attract the flying males. You need to be quick though - a female will stop glowing once she has mated so that she can lay her eggs before her time is up! Have you ever seen a glow worm? Report your sightings to the national survey here.

What a lovely month this has been and whilst June is over, I know that I’ll continue to have random acts of wildness! If you’d like to get involved, there are loads of great tips on the Wildlife Trusts website, here, and why not make July or August your month of going wild?

One of two glow worms spotted in Cambridgeshire on 30/6/2017