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Summer Story from Nature Adventures by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom
Mick and Brita have developed their unique award-winning approach together over 20 years and have based this book on their own nature walks with their family of four young sons. Find out more about their books at www.mickandbrita.com.
Text copyright Manning and Granström 2011
Images reproduced with kind permission from the book Nature Adventures and copyright 2011 Manning and Granström/Frances Lincoln Publishing]
Summer:
Summer Nature Adventures
A nature adventure can happen anywhere, anytime.
Summer is a good time for spotting insects such as butterflies and moths, grasshoppers and crickets, beetles, bees and wasps. It’s also the time when many young birds and animals have left the nest and can be encountered on your walks. Stoat families are very, very nosey. The ‘grass squeal’ will often bring them right up to you. Take a flat blade of grass and trap it between your thumbs. Blow hard until the grass vibrates. This creates a squealing sound that reminds predators of a distressed rabbit.
Wild flowers are in profusion and plant such as wild garlic, lily of the valley and bluebells carpet the woodland floor. The foxglove is my personal favourite. They can be easily recognised by tall stalks and long pink-purple tubular flower heads that are beautifully marked with spots on the inside and often vibrating with foraging bumble bees. Another favourite plant of mine is the humble stinging nettle, a prickly nursery to the caterpillars of peacocks and tortoiseshell butterflies.
If you find yourself walking near a lake look out for great crested grebes carrying their stripy chicks piggyback and noisy coots with their characteristic white beak-shield. Listen for the chattering song of sedge warblers who mimic other birds, adding stolen song snatches to their own helter-skelter repertoire of clicks trills and warbles. If your walk takes you near a river or stream look out for the sharp whistling call and electric blue streak of a kingfisher. Riverbank trees include the willow with its long green leaves that are silvery-pale underneath when the wind blows.
A visit to the seaside will provide hours of happy beachcombing and seabird spotting. Can you tell shag from a cormorant?
If you get up onto the moors or hills in the summer look for moulted feathers and listen for the curlew’s liquid, bubbling call. That small grey and white bird with an orange chest bobbing from rock to rock and flicking his black and white tail is a wheatear. Remember – a nature adventure can happen anywhere, anytime.
