Did you know that there is a whole menagerie of wildlife right on your suburban doorstep?
One of our lovely members shot a beautiful mindfulness video capturing flora, fauna and insects in our local environment, he also gave a rundown of the process and detailed information about the various subjects filmed.
We invite you however first to set aside a few minutes, to create a pause in your busy life, find a comfortable seat, put on 'Do Not Disturb' and to watch this video before you read all the wonderful details below.
Once you've read all the details, you might then like to watch it again.
The invitation is to watch it first just to immerse without activating thoughts about what you have read, then to have the pleasure afterwards of linking the detailed information and spotting the various insects and flowers mentioned.
This is what the creator, Phil said:
“I had seen a number of 'mindful moment' videos, but I was rather taken with their use in the BBC Springwatch programmes, and thought it might be a good way to alert visitors to the Shed that all manner of plant life and creatures, live on and around our site.
I think we’re so used to seeing suburban landscapes as bikes, buses and buildings, that it comes as a bit of a surprise to find a wide variety of wildlife, right on our doorstep."
Since releasing his video on other platforms, Phil said a couple of Sheddington visitors have already become more mindful about their environment, looking out a bit more to see what is around them, which is fantastic news.
Phil then went on to describe the technical aspects of how he made this video, of which we are thoroughly grateful as it's obvious he put in a lot of hard work:
He said "For technical reasons - ie. most of the video was shot at four times speed to enable the action to be slowed down in the edit - much of the birdsong wasn’t recorded along with the pictures, but I have seen or heard pretty much all of the birds on our site at some time or other.
These include, Blackbirds, Robins, House and Tree Sparrows, Goldfinches, Crows, Wood Pigeons, Starlings and Great Tits.
I’m hoping to repeat the filming exercise next year - hopefully a bit more organised, and now better informed" - we think he was very organised and certainly gave us an amazing amount of well received wildlife information.
Can you spot the areas in the video?
The area marked as (1) on the map, is an outdoor section of the site occupied by Sheddington.
Flowers seen there included: Potato blossoms, Lavender, Marigolds, Nasturtiums, Chives and some containerised plants.
The other areas are part of the church estate. The Japanese Spindle bush, close to the church’s front gate (5) attract a lot of insects, including Hornet Mimic Hoverfly. The dandelions were filmed in area (2), and I was hoping to film them again, once their seedheads had developed, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.The Green Eyed Bee was filmed in a wild meadow area planted by church gardener Andrew (6) this area had a good number of thistles, which were very attractive to a range of pollinating insects, including a Thick Legged Flower Beetle. That beetle in the video was a female, because only the males have fat legs.The honey bee colony is in the area marked (7). The beekeepers who own the hive were invited in by the church, but we have become friends with them, and helped out on one or two occasions when they were setting up.
A big thank you to Phil from all of us at Sheddington
