Wild World Cup

I walk to Coed y Felin to avoid the football, but even there there’s no escape.  I see leaping squirrels, more agile than any goal keeper and gangs of sparrows like noisy footy fans, rampage through the hazel hedges. A grey wagtail in its high viz jacket struts and flicks like a crowd marshal. A crow watches from the side lines, hunched and frowning, like Roy Hodgson.  Then a sparrowhawk makes a lunge at its pigeon goal just as a swift swoops in like Suarez, the pigeon escapes and the wren referee sounds its ear-splitting whistle.

So I go to the beach at Gronant where it’s wide and wild and I might see little terns.

I’m welcomed by a choir of skylarks. Their endless song is too sweet to be compared to a footy anthem.   I pass ponds that shelter newts and natter jack toads, swallows swoop over rippling grasses and I feel like Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road as I follow the boardwalk towards the sea.  Pyramidal orchids glow either side of the boardwalk like the solar lights along my garden path and blue-grey sea holly is about to burst open, providing a sweet feast for red and black burnet moths. 

Then I hear the familiar high-pitched creaky chatter and I look up to see a little tern flapping jerkily above me, luminous and glowing in the white hot sun.  I love these little birds, they’re feisty for their size and with black zorro masks they seem to slice up the sky.  And they need to be feisty, during their short breeding season, they have to contend with crows, gulls, foxes and high tides.  The warden is out doing nest counts, he says they’re doing OK but there’s a kestrel around causing problems.

Today the tide is far out and the birds have a long way to go to find food.  I watch one fly back from the frothy sea with a tiny silver fish in its beak.  But distance is no problem for little terns; they fly 4000 miles from the West Coast of Africa to nest here every year. 

Escorted by creaking little terns, I make an epic journey of my own, all the way down to the sea to paddle. The sun burns my ears and the wind ruffles my hair and when I eventually arrive at the water’s edge, the shenanigans in Brazil seem far, far away....

 

No Place Like Home

Sometimes I need help to appreciate my own backyard.  Like Dorothy, it takes a journey over the rainbow and a few adventures before I remember ‘there’s no place like home’.

It’s good to be still after 4000 miles in the campervan.



I'm not the only one who's come home.Wading through bluebells at Coed y Felin I hear a pied fly-catcher.  I’m always startled at how they find their way from Africa to this small patch of Flintshire woodland.  A dapper male sings, 'tree-tree, once more I come to thee.' 
www.northwaleswildlifetrust.org.uk







While shopping for plants in Mold market, I hear swifts screaming overhead. Young swifts spend their first two or three years in constant flight.  I grin at them charging up and down the high street sky like a gang of teenagers. 
www.swift-conservation.org





I visit Moel Famau where
the call of a cuckoo fills the spaces between the clouds. People stop on the hill,tilt their heads to one side and smile. Skylarks sing high over acid green bilberry shrubs that promise a tongue-staining bounty in late summer. 








Drinking tea at the welcoming Shepherd's Hut, I watch small children tumble down the heathery hill as a willow warbler tumbles down the scales. 
www.shepherds-hut.com

 

At my Yoga class we do an invigorating sequence that involves firing an arrow and hurling a thunderbolt. It’s about aiming for goals and achieving them.

Right now my goal is to simply ‘BE’ and there’s no better place to be than at home in Flintshire.
Dru Yoga  www.druworldwide.com