Rewild a Child

My children are wild!

This is a good thing, a really good thing. Research has shown that contact with nature and the wild world around us is excellent for a child's development. It builds confidence and curiosity and reduces stress and anxiety levels. We fit as much wildness as we can into their everyday lives, though it can be hard around school, homework, friends and sleepovers, dance classes and circus classes. What was a real treat was to be able to take them away for a week in the summer for a truly wild week in the Lake District.

To make it a little more exciting, we combined the trip with a Family John Muir award. I find kids love having that kind of recognition to motivate them, and the idea of getting a certificate at the end of it would keep them energised and focused. Actually, I'm just the same too, and relished the idea of adding another piece of paper to my wall. We worked on our proposal as a group, and the kids really contributed to the list of activities we were planning.

One thing that this trip really emphasised for me is the kind of wild creatures that really capture children's attention. I'm a very keen birder, and I'm trying to encourage them in that direction. Sometimes it's very successful. Last year they had wonderful trips to see a Starling murmuration and a harrier roost, where they saw their first Hen Harriers (a species they'd learned about at school as part of the skydancer project) before the sky filled with swirling snow and swirling Marsh Harriers. They also loved watching half a dozen Red Kites soaring together along the Derwent Valley, a trip my seven year old son had requested after seeing one of the birds painted on the side of a bus! They do well with those kinds of big spectacles. They also love any opportunity to get close to birds, as they did with the Kittiwakes on the Baltic and the Chaffinches we saw perching on the hide windowsill at Kielder. However, outside of these encounters it's hard to generate a lot of enthusiasm for the kind of birding that makes up a large proportion of my life, trying to id waders or ducks on a large pond or picking a warbler out of a leafy canopy. This is understandable, they are still young and that is a lot of effort for not a whole lot of reward if I am honest.




What my kids love is creepy crawlies, bugs, insects, minibeasts, and things of that ilk. They've been going pond dipping and rock pooling for years, and it does allow them to get really close to the creatures they are looking at, literally hands on in some cases. This was something we were very prepared for on this trip. The holiday lodge we were staying in is a few minutes walk away from the Cumbria Wildlife Trust's Barkbooth Lot reserve, a fantastic, quiet little nature reserve that combines woodland, a stream and an open fell top area with an excellent selection of butterflies and dragonflies.


 We spent several days there, armed with our new sweep net, butterfly net, pooters and collection jars. Before they went too wild, however, I gave them all strict instructions around the proper use of the equipment, including not to try and catch any of the rare and protected Fritillary Butterflies we might see, and to be careful around the ponds with leeches. They learned about teneral dragonflies and to be particularly careful with them. They learned to stick to the paths, such as they were through the ferns, and not to disturb the anthills that dotted the landscape.



As it happens, it was one of the quietest summers I've ever seen there for butterflies and dragonflies. The only large dragon we saw was a single Emperor, none of the other hawkers or chasers seemed to be present. Likewise, last summer I saw three different Fritillary species in one afternoon. This year I saw none, though my daughter was thrilled that the first butterfly she managed to catch was a Gatekeeper, a rare species that I got rather excited about.

 The lack of "rares" didn't bother the kids at all, and all day long I was being presented with minibeasts of all descriptions, with Shield Bugs, moths, Ladybirds and my first ever dung beetle. Some of them I could identify, but many others were photographed for future reference.




 A core part of my child-rewilding project has been the National Trust's 50 Things to Do Before You're 11 3/4, and I took an idea out of their Extra Messy edition. Each child had a jam jar, that they collected berries, petals and anything else they found to make a smelly potion (that was NOT for tasting!). Back at the lodge we added water, and then baking powder and vinegar to make bubbling smelly potions. This was great fun and I'll definitely try it again. We had a lot of debate about who had the best smelling potion, the nicest looking potion and the bubbliest potion and there was a surprising amount of variation on every count.

Of course the National Trust aren't the only ones who promote wild experiences for children, and it just so happened that we were away over the weekend of the RSPB's Big Wild Sleepout. my kids tried this last year with a tent in their back garden. They must have liked it because they ended up sleeping out there for almost a week. Last year I started getting into microadventures and wild camping though, and I wanted this year's to be a proper wild sleepout. So after a bbq dinner we headed up into the woods opposite our lodge to find a decent spot to camp. We'd been for a walk there earlier in the trip and found an excellent clearing near the top, but walking up in the dusk we settled for a smaller but just as serviceable clearing that wasn't nearly as far. There was a nice, flat grassy area for the kids to pitch their tent and a wide choice of trees for my hammock. Everybody slept really well up among the trees, giving me the confidence to try slightly wilder sites in future, and my older two are quite keen to give hammock camping a try, after climbing into mine the next morning.

 It was nice to be able to pack up in the morning though, and be back at the lodge ten minutes later for breakfast. Maybe in 2017 we'll just try hammock camping in the same bit of woods, and build up from there.

Bee Safari

Two bee days or not two bee days?  That is the question.  Because technically this act of wildness took place over two days and an additional evening.

with apologies to Bill Shakespeare.




This one started totally by accident.
Last Tuesday I was at my mum's with my youngest child, (preschool age) while his brother and sister were at school.  For some reason my mum's conservatory is totally entrancing to bumblebees so I ended up rescuing several of them with a shot glass and a bit of paper.  Then I discovered that you could feel their buzzing through the paper, which we both really liked.  That led into seeing what different types of bees we could find in the garden.

This is where my lack of preparation revealed itself.  Last year I learnt to identify some of the commoner bee species and I've got a lovely FSC chart showing two dozen of them.  Unfortunately as with so many of the summer species I'd forgotten most of what I'd learned about identifying bumblebees and my fancy chart was sitting on a shelf at home.  So we didn't get much further than recognising that there were a lot of different types of bees in the garden and that they were pretty cool.

We carried on this activity with the other two when they got back from school, once they'd eaten and while they were playing with bubble mixture in the garden.  My daughter also had a bee chart back at home and we both promised to check it later (neither of us ever did though).

As the afternoon turned into evening, the sun came out and it was glorious.  Rather than staying in the garden or risking them turning towards the TV or iPad for further entertainment, we went around to the Iris Brickfield, a few streets away, for some outdoor play and a bit of wild time.  We'd been here earlier in the day with my youngest and they've added loads of pretty cool play equipment to the place, including an obstacle course that I really wanted to see how my older two would handle.  It's also a lovely little spot for wildlife with lots of long grass, flowers, a pond that looks like it really should have dragonflies and a mix of trees and shrubs.  There were hirundines swooping all around us while we played, and then, while I was sitting chatting to my older son on the platform of a slide I spotted something small and yellow land.  We jumped down to check it out and it was an Orange Ladybird.  I've only ever seen this species once before, two years ago, funnily enough also in a park with the kids, and then it totally blew my mind.  I knew you got different species of Ladybird and they weren't all red but I really wasn't expecting this lovely little orange-yellow thing with white spots.  It was great to find one again and this time to get photos!

On the evening of day 20 I was walking home from my mum's late in the evening (10-ish) thinking about how I hadn't really done anything wild all day.  Then I passed a large bush by the side of the path with globular orange flowers, and despite the time this bush was covered in bees!  None of them seemed to be doing very much at all, most just sat there, upside down or right way up, with one of two moving around a little bit.


I spent ages watching them, fascinated to see behaviour on a city street from such a common insect that I've never witnessed before.  When I got home and shared this on Twitter I learnt that it is a fairly common thing.  I'd just always assumed bumblebees slept in some kind of hive somewhere, not just hanging upside down on a flower!  Nature always finds new ways to surprise us, it really does.

That led nicely into day 21's planned activity, a re-run of our bee safari but this time with the right tools to actually identify the bees.  Well, some of the tools.  I had the chart but I forgot my sample pots and I still need to order the nets.  Together we managed to identify four different bee species in my mum's back garden, with White-tailed, Buff-tailed, Common Carder and Early Bumblebees busily buzzing around her flowers.  We also found an unfortunate Tree Bumblebee that had become squished in the window frame.  After tea we headed back around to the Iris Brickfield, where we were going to be foraging for elder flowers, and I set my daugher a challenge:  to find a Red-tailed Bumblebee.  She was absolutely delighted when she found not one but two right outside my mum's front door.  We also found a much more alive Tree Bumblebee in the front garden and then a Forest Cuckoo Bumblebee, one I don't recall ever seeing before.


What was really nice about this was that when I first proposed it, my daughter really couldn't be bothered with it.  She's also doing 30 Days Wild, but was quite happy having the foraging as her wild thing for the day.  On the way home she said that it'd been her favourite part of the whole evening.  I think this is largely because I set her a challenging but achievable task that she managed to accomplish.  Red-tailed Bumblebees are probably the easiest bumblebee species to identify but finding one herself made her feel really good.

Foraging for elder flowers was really good fun, and then, while the kids went off and had a play I followed a moth around that I'd spotted.  It finally landed and I got a decent shot of its nicely marked wings.  It was only later that night when I was looking at the photo that I suddenly realised what it was.  Its wing markings distinctly resembled the face of a wizened crone, which meant that it could only be a Mother Shipton Moth.  A quick Google search confirmed it and I had a nice new moth to add to my list.  Another one I found in a hedge as we were walking home has been identified by more experienced eyes than mine as a Lesser Treble Bar Moth, which is also a new one for me.


The elder flowers are being turned into elder flower champagne, but that's a story for another day!