Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris

The safari was out at dawn again in a nice crisp frost. Strangely quieter than yesterday. The usual suspects were about but not making as much noise by a long chalk. We watched the Peregrine fly over Magpie Wood (below) to the east as the mist started to form across the rough field.

Nothing of any note in the park except for Roger the black Rabbit - he could easily be several individuals but as we only ever see one at a time Roger 'he' is.
On the 'sports' field the mist was thickening but only to about 10 feet high - had Frank wandered much further he'd have disappeared from view.

Coming back down the hill there were very few Starlings about - pre-empting Forest's comment on yesterday's post we took the camera this morning specifically to try and get a shot or two of them - tomorrow we'll be too early and it will still be dark, but these are the houses they fly over - just imagine 15000 black dots spread out over them in a narrow vertical plane

After a pub lunch with wifey we set out along the embankment in Birds2blog-land. The tide was just on the ebb and we soon found a reasonable sized flock of Wigeon to grill coming up a creek. Sadly nothing from 'across the pond' with them. A much larger flock was on the far side of the estuary but well out of range to work through them properly. A Golden Plover (106) added excitement by engaging in some remarkable swooping and stalling with bizarre half turns aerobatics and provide the only year tick of the day . The supporting cast on our side included Redshanks, Curlews, Little Grebes and Mute Swans. Over at Conder Pool there were Tufted Ducks aplenty and we watched a Little Grebe subdue a small fish. A good number of Common Gulls were roosting on the water with a few Black Headeds.

By now it was time to give Frank some freedom so we set off back home, to play ball for half an hour before it went dark, and didn't take a short detour down Jeremy Lane where apparently there were a couple of White Fronted Geese (one of each race) and a Tundra Bean Goose nearby too - a big mistake. Not only that we had aready dipped out on Spotted Redshank and Greenshank on the estuary. Not to worry we'll have to pick em up next week.

Where to next? Back to the patches and if we're lucky a photo of the Starling spectacular later in the week.

In the meantime let us know what you missed in your outback today.