Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris

The Safari had the third and final group from school out on site today. Not quite as over-exciting as yesterday but this interesting looking caterpillar with a rather natty caramel coloured head - once again we're open to sensible ID offers as we haven't got a clue. At first we thought it might have been another Ruby Tiger but we found several of those and all of them were mature with black haired with black heads and perhaps a little smaller than this one. Having said that it still could be a Ruby Tiger.

Also found were several tiny flies with the most beautiful gorgeous golden eyes. The usual handful of Frogs, mostly one year olds, and a big orange skirted Black Slug. It's weird how you can go to the same place with thirty pairs of eyes and find a totally different suite of creatures two or three days running.

Plenty of Froghoppers  today and two species of Mirid Plant Bug, species we didn't see on the two previous sessions.

After school we headed off round the corner to the reserve proper. A scan down to the far end showed a few birders looking at the geese in the fields to the east. we resolved to get round as quickly as possible to join them...they had scopes ;-)

On the way we had several Migrant Hawkers and a nice flock of (Goldcrest-free) Long Tailed Tits.

A Jay flew across the path as we chatted to a fiend we've not seen for a while (MMLNR #93). The other birders had a Barnacle Goose (271, 185, 94)in their scopes - plan worked then :-) amongst the 3000 or so Pink Feet. The Black Swan wasn't counted (good job we've got it on the year list for real already) but the eight Whooper Swans were (95).

Feral Black Swan with wild Pink Feet.

Proper real wild Black Swans - part of an enormous flock on Lake Muir whose trumpeting calls sounded very reminiscent of the Whoopers back in Lancashire.

A scan through the swans gave us our only photograph of Australian Shelducks - not sure how as they are very common.

We heard that a Kingfisher had not long passed through, that would have been a useful bird for the reserves list and one closer to the ton up. We think we'll be on the reserve a few more times before the end of the year and you never know...

Where to next? Probably a bit of vis migging tomoz.
In the meantime let us know what's where it shouldn't be in your outback.