Wet again

The Safari got a Patch 1 tick last night whilst playing footy with Frank. We've been doing this Patch counting caper since November 2008 and yesterday's Skylark, heading north, was the first one recorded in all that time. A bit weird when you consider that on a decent migration day at this time of year you can get triple figures going over the nature reserve which is only about a mile or so away as the Skylark flies - we must be in a bit of a migration backwater which might also explain the lack of species like Spotted and Pied Flycatcher and Redstart, Wood Warbler which you might expect to drop into the nicely wooded park from time to time; even Chiffchaffs which seem to be on the move at the moment appear to be giving us the miss.

No Patch 1 safari this morning, heavy rain had us bottling out of doing the full round, we just went far enough to note the continued absence of the Peregrines.

The torrential rain at normal Patch 2 pre-work time didn't bother us as we couldn't nip out on safari due to having to hack our way through the rush our traffic to another office for a meeting. By the time the meeting had finished and we were on the road again the rain had stopped. Cunningly we had stashed the scope in the back of the Land Rover ready for such an eventuality. Unfortunately there was little to see. The Red Throated Diver hadn't moved over night but the number of Common Scoters looked like it had just about doubled to around 200 mostly sat quietly on the rising tide.

No pics today - sorry

Where to next? Back to the normal patchy stuff tomorrow.

In the meantime let us know how wet it's been in your outback.