To ask for beautiful experiences with wild animals

[freeAnneBoleyn]

I was just curious, as a family member have been to see the seals today (we come from a part of the UK where they come up onto a local beach to breed. It’s all patrolled by volunteers to make sure people don’t get too close but you can have a lovely walk and see all the rotund little babies and juveniles flobbing about adoringly on the sand)

He’s sent me some lovely pictures and it made me remember the summers I spent with my mates near that beach when regularly a seal or two would come and swim with us. We never courted it or tried to get overly close but they’d just hang out for a bit, bobbing up and down. It was lovely.

The time I rescued a stag beetle from a pint in our local London beer garden was pretty cool, and I once re-launched a beautiful sparrow hawk who’d got trapped in our shed after our guinea pigs, and there was the time I found a lame fox in Southwark (I’ve name changed as all my family and friends know this one) and persuaded the nearest Pizza Express to let me guide it into their enclosed foyer and sit with it (it was very very calm and gentle) fit two hours while a rescue centre could get a van to us. It did chew my handbag but it was only a cheap thing

AIBU to ask for yours?

When I was at university a pheasant used to come into our garden every morning and eat out of our hands. My parents never believed me but it was true.

I grew up in a village and my route home from school was across fields. It was the Christmas holidays and thick snow. My friend and I had been at a panto rehearsal so the field was deserted. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an animal approaching at great speed - it stood out due to the snow. I thought it was the farmer's dog but as it got closer I saw it was a huge, brown hare at top speed. It stopped in front of us and skidded across the snow. It was like a dream - he stared straight at us, he was so majestic and it felt quite an honour to be so close to him, his back foot was massive, he turned and sprinted off with the snow spraying around him.

I don't know why but I often think about it, may be because I haven't been so close to a wild animal in motion before.

I had a flat tyre at work and one of my co-workers came out to change my tyre.

This little bird kept hopping around to try and see what he was doing, eventually it landed on his hands to try and get a closer look.

I've never ever seen a wild bird do that before, it stayed there the whole time even as he was moving around!

Aforementioned bird

My mum has a badger who lives near her back door somewhere. It comes out most evenings and trots past the kitchen and back door, on its way somewhere. Sometimes it dawdles around the bird feeders, scoffing peanuts. Sometimes it peers in through the catflap. Usually the cat sits and watches it through the catflap. It's quite fat and snuffly, and just happily goes about its evening without bothering anyone.

I was going to come on and comment sarcastically about one time a massive bird shat all down me as I was walking into am interview (true story)

But then I actually started reading all your posts and have enjoyed every one of them and have been googling the dolphins in Scotland (I'm from Scotland and never knew this)

I once saw a police officer stop traffic in Edinburgh city centre and escort a mother duck and half a dozen ducklings across the road. Somehow they had ended up on the wrong side of the street and needed to get back to the safety of the park. One little duckling couldn’t quite manage to climb the kerb so the policeman reached down and gave it a little boost. It was amazing to see!

Watching the nightly bat show at dusk.
Feeding a hedgehog cat food and listening to lovely snuffly noises.
In the summer there was the largest and most beautiful dragonfly I've ever seen swooping around the garden.

When we were in Kenya, a monkey came swinging into our room, stole some bananas and sat on top of a shelf eating them. And on safari we woke up to see an elephant and her baby outside the window.😊

Oh and I live near Dartmoor - having a picnic and the wild ponies coming to investigate.

I forgot we also did an escorted bat hunt. It was amazing and there are phone apps to pick up their chatter. We had a machine but apparently the apps are good.

A broken twig in deadened leaves // A gallop halts in ground and air // A cloven thud, surrendered dance // Alone he stands, a satyr's stare. // A moment still I hold my breath // Pointed pride, he’s caught my track // Hazel-backed and scars to bare // Solemn in a fragile glow.

I encountered him just beyond the turn of afternoon and evening on a mid-winter day, the date of which isn't important, leading his spectral hunt across a landscape which was my traitor and his confidant; for I thought I was the one arriving with the upper hand but it was he who granted me the time and held my gaze. For a moment, it was unclear who was most startled by whom.

It’s my favourite thing about fell and trail running; the animals I encounter in the wilderness. But I’ll never forget that red deer stag on the South Downs one crisp January Sunday.

I have a hedgehog family in my garden living in the bushes. Mum and child. They've been there since the child was a tiny little thing and now it's huge, much bigger than his mum.

They happily snuffle around me when I'm in the garden of an evening. Been a good few years now.

I have two Northern Ravens nested in my neighbours roof. I say I have because they swoop down and eat the food I put out on the table for them. Now, if I go to the door they make a righteous noise from the roof if I don't fill the bird table.

Sat in a car park on my own in the middle of Dartmoor at 2am watching a family of 2 adult badgers and 4 juveniles. Sat and watched them for about an hour. The little ones had knocked a bin over and we're going through the rubbish and then chasing each other and wrestling.

My phone was in my car the other side of the car park so I didn't get any photos and just sat down and watched and don't think I hardly breathed for so long! They were so close to me, like 20ft away and they must have known I was there and didn't seem bothered. Really regret not been able to get any video/photos because it was better than any badger footage I've ever seen on the tv!

I unexpectedly saw a barn owl flying on Christmas day this year. Earlier this year locally I saw a black mink and king fishers. On my wider travels this year, I saw humming birds, owl and swam with huge turtles in warm seas. Life under the sea is so varied and you never know what you will see when you dive !

I used to study zoology so had loads especially on a field trip to Trinidad where we saw turtles lay eggs. Perhaps the best was when we found the most poisinous snake in South America in our shower...! Miss them days.

I am aware that to most that wouldn't be a 'beautiful' experience though.

In the uk...definately owls and a seal swimming up to me in St Ives.

I was at work once and coming out the back door to go home. I saw what I thought was a cat at first, maybe 5 feet away from me. As I looked closer, I realized it was a fox! (This was in a small town in North America. We do have foxes here but not as commonly as in the UK.) We stared into each other's eyes for a few seconds. I wondered whether it was going to attack me or what it would do. Instead it turned tail and ran off. But it was incredibly surreal.

malificent it’s beautiful to me. When I was hiking alone in Italy this year this MASSIVE black asp slithered our centimetres in front of me, I just gasped, it was gone in a few seconds but it was bloody awesome and I’d never have seen that if I hadn’t have hung back until the noisy big group in front of me had got far enough ahead!

Love the image of those badgers Nico!

freeAnneBoleyn Are you in Lincolnshire at Donna Nook/Cleethorpes in your OP photo?

thenightsky no I didn’t take it, my brother did but it was at Horsey Gap, Norfolk.

Name changed as would be outing.

We live in a rural community where a lot of the children are in a surf life saving club, in the summer they train in the sea 2/3 times a week. One evening session the surf was amazing for the nippers (7-12 year olds), perfect conditions so instead of hard training we let them have a surfing session. The caught waves and played around in the sea as it started to get darker, just as they were sitting on their boards at the back of the surf a pod of dolphins turned up literally meters away from them and proceeded to give them the sort of show you normally see in the horrible SeaWorld places. They jumped and span and slapped their tails on the water as a group, it was almost as though they were saying 'you think you are so great eh, see what we can do'. Watching from the shore as the sun went down it was the most amazing thing watching them almost within touching distance of them, and for the children sitting on their boards it was a magical experience. Never seen anything else close to it in my life. The combination of glassy sea with the sunset colours and the silhouettes of everyone sitting on boards watching, just perfect.

Towards later afternoon, my husband and I took a cable car to the top of a mountain in Switzerland. It was very quiet with a small restaurant there at the mountain peak. We bought food and sat outside. My husband suddenly went rigid and hissed 'Don't move'. There was a golden eagle hovering about six feet away from us, just eyeing us up. Hovered there for about 20 seconds and then flew off. We could almost have touched it if we reached out.

I think the eagle went to the cafe at the end of every day for the leftover food on the floor!!

I used to have a kangaroo that lived over my back paddock. I would sit on my back patio to have breakfast, and one morning I went back inside to get something and came outside to find her stealing the toast from my plate, bold as brass. From that morning on she always came up and would eat the crusts, then lay on the patio and sun herself for a while until I got up to go to work. There were a few times over the years that she had a joey with her as well.

Quite a few years ago I had the privilege of getting to hold an orphaned baby koala for an entire day. Completely ruined my top, but totally worth it.

I got to take a tiger for a walk on a lead.

Where I live now has a big turtle in the swimming bay. He's placid enough that he'll come right up to you and you can grab hold of the sides of his shell and he'll take you for a ride.

The Golden Eagles that live just up the glen. Always lovely to see them especially the close encounters where they take off fairly close.

Midnite you’ve been really lucky! That sounds awesome.