An intervention by Radio Four

An intervention by Radio Four

Puffin, swift and curlew by Dave Steel

Dave Steel’s 30 Days Wild adventure continues at home, before he strides out for Day 16 on the mosslands.

A Sunday morning - WILD from the comfort of home. Thank you Radio 4 for your programme about Skomer Island, and its wildlife with some emphasis on how our ‘Parrot of the Sea lives its life.

I have wanted all month to get my photos of puffin, taken at Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve last year, as part of my 30 Days Wild. And this pause, with my first cuppa of the day before I wandered out to get day 16 out on the moss, gave me my excuse.

Mistle thrush, now in small flocks, took their breakfast from recently disturbed fields, whilst skylark sang from on high.

An image of the Wild was forming but I felt it needed a greater fanfare as the voice of the larks were quite distant. Little Woolden Moss Nature Reserve, this wildlife phoenix from the ashes, was surely going to provide the extra decibels of celebration of Day 16.

And it did, as a pair of curlew, with hidden young, made obvious to me by their behaviour, let me emphatically know that my presence on the track was not welcome.

I moved on, into the path of low flying swift, their images I tried to capture. A success of sorts I suppose.

Oystercatcher bellowed their calls about the reserve as they chased off marauding lesser black backed gulls (they too need to feed).

Then, a gentle wind from the south closed Day 16 as a meadow pipit delivered its song from atop a small silver birch tree, giving  a peaceful serenading end to the start of Father’s Day, spent in the company of our grandchildren.

30 Days Wild