Pretty good safari-ing without going anywhere

The Safari was able to accompany Frank to the park this morning - A full Patch 1 walk for a change. Dunnocksville! including a big fight lots of singing and wing flicking ended in a Coot-like brawl with one pinning the other to the ground by standing on it then pecking at it - never seen anything like it before...the two others, assumed females, just looked on. Saw several others scattered around too. blackbirds were also squaring up to each other over boundary disputes. 

We went past the Golden Triangle where we heard the Song Thrush, then into the park past the Common Winter-cress, which is an omission from the 'Flora' - no dot for it in Patch 1's tetrad.

Once in the park we started whistling chiff-chaff and within seconds we had a response from the real thing - Chiffchaff (P1 #27).

We went to check the Frog pond and disturbed a Heron which had just caught a Frog or Toad, need to check this pond for Great Crested Newts soon.

Another Song Thrush sang loudly from the top of the park.

Back at Base Camp we emptied the moth trap - only four this morning; Early Grey and a cracking Early Thorn and two Hebrew Characters.

Early Grey

Early Thorn

As we were mothing a Great Tit sped past us with a beakful of moss and dived straight into our House Sparrow terrace.

The garden is beginning to get a nice show of Cowslips, they're becoming a weed! There should be lots of seed later in the year.

At the base of one of the trees planted on the main road's verge last year is a nice patch of Dove's Foot Cranesbill - Not sure what the passing motorists thought of our big ar*e sticking up skywards as we got this pic.

A Sparrowhawk was 'given' to us by the gulls but they failed to find us any other raptors.

Much later in the afternoon we got a txt off Young Un AB saying he'd just had an Osprey and it was coming our way. We dashed outside to the top of the garden and started scanning and listening for the gulls. It was crystal clear we could see all the way to the fells to the east but the only raptor we found was a Kestrel being chased by a Magpie over the North Blackpool Pond Trail. 

Then we heard a slight commotion from the gulls and scanned around - we found it - an Osprey (138) going north at great height just below the cloud base. But was it the same bird as AB's? His was low and a good half hour or so earlier - probably not! Unfortunately it was too far out to the east and wasn't a garden or Patch 1 tick, it did, however, go almost directly over CR's place.

Where to next? An exciting far flung safari beyond the South-side tomorrow with an early start.

In the meantime let us know what had you craning your neck in your outback.