30 Days Wild: Wyming Brook

2016-06-01 17.32.45May is always one of my favourite months and this one did not disappoint. We have had a fantastic time getting out and about, enjoying evening walks, seeing some amazing wildlife and taking part in some brilliant events. I’ve been trying to be more active and get outdoors more – something I certainly succeeded in doing over the last few weeks. However June is exam season and is often a distinctly sedentary time for me, so when I saw people tweeting about #30DaysWild it seemed to be the perfect challenge.

The idea is simple: just do something wild every day in June. What qualifies as an act of wildness? All sorts of things: I could go for a walk, watch some wildlife, make a bug house – the possibilities are almost endless. Maybe I could even blog about it!

I decided to start with a trip to Wyming Brook, one of the Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust’s reserves. I’ve been past it many times, but I had never visited until today. We went hoping for a nice walk and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of something I have never seen: a crossbill.

Within a few steps from the car park, the noise of the eponymous brook was drowning out any noise from traffic. In fact pretty much the only sounds we heard for the entire walk were water and birdsong. It was somewhat wilder than I expected; there were plenty of bridges and sturdy stepping stones, but also some interesting rocky paths to negotiate as we followed the brook downstream to Wyming Brook Drive. The drive leaves the stream behind and meanders off through the woodland. It is all rather beautiful, but surprisingly, given the number of birds that we could hear, we got almost to the end of the walk before we sighted a single feathery creature. Our ornithological tally amounted to one blackbird, one robin and a blimey-that-was-fast-what-was-that-bird that zipped past.

Our walk was short, but it was fantastic – an instant favourite that we’ll be trying again. Especially since we didn’t mange to spot any crossbills, other than the magnificent specimen on the information board (or, as we like to call it, the ‘Here’s what you could have seen’ board.) Ho hum. Better luck next time. Still, a good start to my 30 days. What’s next?

 

 

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1 comment to 30 Days Wild: Wyming Brook

  • I’ve had that ‘here’s what you could have seen’ feeling when climbing a hill to look for mythical puffins in Norway. All I got was an egg cup puffin from the gift shop back at the start of the trail.

    But I have seen crossbills in Scotland this week. One even visits to get crumbs if I’m sitting on the balcony here.