Day 2 - 30 Days Wild - An evening nature stroll

*Today's random act of wildness - an evening nature stroll*

Today was a very sad day, I found out that my best friend's mum had died suddenly in the night and most of the day I spent walking around in a daze and thinking of the grief my friend was going through.

After work, I decided to go and get some fresh air and clear my head at a local nature reserve called  'Swansea Vale Nature Reserve'. It's a beautiful place and one of the few remaining wetland habitats in the City of Swansea. It has a variety of plants and animals and these are some of our findings...

The first thing we saw is a grey heron lucking in the reed beds...

...it wasn't long before he sets off...

...to find his mate!

There are lots of wild flowers and trees around the reserve, including orchids, lilies and bulrushes. This means lots of insects including damselflies and lacewings.

Water Hemlock

Southern Marsh Orchid

Green Lacewing

Male Azure Damselfly

Apparently there are otters on the reserve, but the only mammal we encountered was this cheeky grey squirrel. We spotted several on our walk and there are houses adjacent to the reserve so no doubt they have these cheeky chappies visiting...what a cool place to live!

Grey Squirrel

There were lots of birds around, but unfortunately they didn't stay still long enough to get any good photos, birds I definitely identified were: Carrion Crow, Heron, Robins, Blackbirds, Blackcap, Dunnock, Wood Pigeons, Blue Tits, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit (with fledgling) and possibly a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Carrion Crow

So our little evening walk proved to be a success, we were literally there for only an hour and managed to see all these 'wild' things. I will definitely go back in a few weeks earlier in the day to see what else we can see. 

When we got home I brushed up on my insect identification with the help from my #30DaysWild mascot 'Wildling' - Who I forgot to take on our walk (but don't tell him that!).

Due to unforeseen circumstances Wildling couldn't make the trip to the nature reserve so helped me identify the animals when I got home.

Day 8 - 30 Days Wild - Feeding time at the lake

I had quite a busy day today, what with work and a bit of shopping to do this evening - I thought I wouldn't be able to do anything wild. After we left the supermarket we realised that we still had some duck feed left over from yesterday so we went to a nearby lake hoping that there were some birds about.

Fendrod Lake is situated in the middle of an Enterprise Park in Swansea and is around 13 acres. We hadn't visited since winter and were surprised with the amount of bird life on the lake. There were so many swans, Canada geese and mallard that I knew we hadn't brought near enough food!

Here I am with some of the hungry customers

The swans are so cheeky they will even eat out of your hand!

It wasn't long before more and more ducks, geese and swans came over...

...including these gorgeous six goslings.

The goslings weren't the only babies, check our these three cygnets hitching a ride on mum!

"Hello! Look at me!"

Once they came off their mum these white geese chased them off...nasty things!

Lots of birds on the lake.

These white geese were really demanding!

Dan trying to keep up with the many mouths to feed.

A heron even made an appearance, but he was only interested in fishing!

In the nearby banks juvenile sparrows were feeding on some flowers.

We love it at Fendrod Lake and so do these guys x

Even though we thought we wouldn't be doing anything 'wild' today we proved ourselves wrong. Just taking some duck feed to a nearby lake gave us tremendous pleasure and we can't wait to return with MUCH more food!

So my random act of wildness today was 'feeding the ducks'.