The Safari has DB to thank as she was good enough to come down at lunchtime and show us and the Young Uns where the invisible Limpet was. Well she thought she knew as it wasn't where she first thought it was. No it hadn't shot off elsewhere but was slightly off to the side of where we'd been looking.
Local 1st in the bag! When will be find the next?
There was a chance this arvo when we set off with the vols to clean our stretch of the beach as part of the Love my Beach campaign.
No Limpets and thankfully not much litter. But some of that limited litter was just a little of the wall. Well more like off the shelves in the cabinet stood against the wall in the 1970s...
Not your usual dumped on the beach rubbish...we're off to the Antiques Roadshow! The wee house has lost a chimney...but bizarrely AB found it about 50 yards further sown the beach.
After the beach clean we attacked the work's pond to remove as many of the 30 or so 3-Spined Sticklebacks in there before the breeding season. You wouldn't believe it, we eventually pulled out 70!!! One of them actually attacked us with its spines, only a tiny tiddler but it did get a spine in as we were easing out of the net. It felt like a Bramble thorn and was strong enough to easily hold the fish upside down on the end of our finger. It did swim off in good health but shocked us - we didn't think a 1cm long fish's spine would be sharp/long enough to penetrate the skin on the end of our index finger, plenty enough to put a predatory fish off a meal. We've always said with this nature game you learn something new everyday, and today was certainly no exception.
The fish were released at the big park where after letting them go into a quite corner of the lake we had a quick look around the wooded area nearby. Worth it! We had some of the best views of a Treecreeper (106) we've ever had; it flew past us from behind and landed at nose height about 18 inches in front us. It went slow up the tree without going round the far side. It then flew back past us to another tree where it typically landed at the bottom and did the same, not going round the back. We watched it for about five minutes never more than a yard away, too close to get the camera out of its bag without flushing it...didn't need the camera the memories will last for ever...simply stunning. So close were we that we could see the tail feathers flexing as it shuffled up the tree.
Where to next? Gonna be hard to beat today as was a really cracking day but tomorrow we've got a surprise for you...we're traveling south out of Safari-land for a birding day with the Little C who's now quite big...really looking forward to having the day with him and being shown his local hotspots in a part of the country we just don't know.
In the meantime let us know what 'simple' wildlife gave the surprises in your outback.
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