A decent mixed bag

The Safari has some different goodies for you today. First up the Sparrowhawk's tail was still sticking out over the edge of the nest. At Patch 2 there was horrendously little but one or two gulls on the beach so a good look through them gave us a real bonus a 2nd summer Yellow Legged Gull. Off the prom with AB at lunchtime the gulls came to the fore again when we had a distant Kittiwake , but not much else.

A little gardening gave us a site speciality - hardly special but we've never found one anywhere else - a Campion larva in a Red Campion seed pod. Look hard, it is in there!

AB struck the jackpot when at the end of the session he found one that was toddling off to pupate. The adult is a really bonny moth that we've never seen!
Once the garden had been attended to it was time for a twitch. Off to the north end of town to hopefully get the year list rolling again.
An Angle Shades moth was almost trodden on whilst we tried to get yet another pic of a Red Admiral.

The target bird was this pair of Mandarins (188) which were soon found lurking amongst the gaggle of Mallards.

Other decent stuff aruond there included a nice patch of Ragged Robin.

and a nice little micro - the name of which is...???

Back down the road aways we went to see if we could add to the tally of Bee Orchids at the North Blackpool Pond Trail - we couldn't find any more than two of the four somewhere on site. We did however up our score of Broomrapes from one to eleven.

One small area that has held Bee Orchids didn't produce any but there was a good showing of Square Stemmed St John's Wort, the Common Centauries were just tarting to bud but we couldn't find any in flower but they should be out by the weekend given a bit of sun...

Find of the site were three Latticed Heath moths and our second Small Skipper of the year (first was in the Butterfly Zone of Patch 1 last night.

After yesterday's Froglet we found nother 'model' almost willing to pose for the camera...took a fair bit of very gentle persuasion to get this 2CY Toad to stay still for his pics.

Yep - he peed on us while we were handling him....Toads always do!

Where to next? A gang of youngsters are going to hit the beach tomorrow...we'll try to remember the camera this time.

In the meantime let us know what your outback threw at you today.