Wow - I can’t believe that another year has gone by and it’s already 30 Days Wild!
Last year was my first year taking part in the nature challenge and as Outreach Officer for the Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT) I happily jumped into 30 Days Wild feet first. I could go as far to say that June was my favourite month of 2022 and 30 Days Wild absolutely had a part to play in that. Looking back, some of the highlights of last year’s challenge must be:
• The Big Wild Breakfast where I gathered the team, attempted to cook a fry-up and enjoyed it outside.
• Hugging the Rowan tree in our office garden as an act of solidarity (my name is short for Rowan).
• Planting some wildflower seeds as part of our Pollinator Project.
• Showing the local playgroup moths, which we found in our moth trap. I visit the group once a week, running nature-based Activities and this was one of the most popular of the year. The children especially loved holding the various hawkmoths!
This year at the AWT, we are not only participating in 30 Days Wild, but it also happens to be our annual Wildlife Week celebration. This is a seven-day long event which we have organised and hosted for over twenty years now - starting in parallel with our launch as a Wildlife Trust! It began on the 29th of May and finished on June the 4th and I used the first 30 Days theme of ‘Tune into the Senses’ to help me come up with ideas for events.
Firstly, on Thursday the 1st of June we had a Sensing Nature Walk on Longis Nature Reserve. This is the first time (while I have been here) the Alderney Wildlife Trust has run an event like this, so I was especially excited to see what exactly happens and how the public embrace it. We planned to walk barefoot at points, feeling the grass between our toes and listening to birdsong with our eyes closed. Longis Nature Reserve is the largest terrestrial reserve on Alderney, which covers around 1/8th of the island, so we should see some incredible wildlife including colourful dashes in the sky as butterflies pass by.
Excitingly, we hosted the Alderney premier of ‘The Blue’, a documentary from a Guernsey-based organisation called Wild Islands. The film focuses on marine life in the Bailiwick of Guernsey (including Alderney), and we showed it at the Alderney Cinema, where viewers can fully immerse themselves in the incredible underwater world. Towards the end of Week 1 of 30 Days Wild, (and the final day of this year’s Wildlife Week) we engaged our taste buds with a marine foraging expedition! Our knowledgeable Marine Team headed out to Clonque Bay (within Alderney’s Ramsar site) and led the public in search of edible seaweeds and shellfish, such as sea lettuce, pepper dulce and limpets. I think this activity proved popular with all ages and is one of the events I was most looking forward to.
Having our Wildlife Week guide us into June not only ensured 30 Days Wild is off to a fantastic start but also hopefully inspired the public to carry on with the wonderful challenge and give them some ideas on how to feel connected to nature.