Brought the sun back with us

The Safari is back at Base Camp after a very peaceful week away. We went out at dusk last night to listen for roding Woodcocks. No luck there but on the walk down to the river we saw our first bat in a long time, didn't take the bat detector with us on this break for some reason - we always pop it in the travel bag! Also in the general area we heard two Tawny Owls. As we approached the river we heard an Otter whistling over on the far side of the river so we cautiously took advantage of as much cover as we could and found a little nook to sit down in and waited. We didn't see them at first but then saw two heads making their way across the river not far away. We held our breath and hoped they would come our way and pass within a few inches of us - they didn't musta gone upstream instead.

The bats were putting on a show and a half whizzing on;y a few feet in front of us. Daubenton's Bats plucked emerging Mayflies from the surface of the river, while Pipistrelles darted along the riverside vegetation and Noctules as big as Swallows cruised high over the centre of the river.

The weather over our week didn't really allow the moth trap to go out :-( but the steath-cam was set up over the garden most of the time and apart from getting good close ups of the gardener mowing the lawn we did get this...

All in all a good break although we would have liked to have connected with the big passage of Long Tailed Skuas  along the east coast a couple of days ago...but you can't have everything.

This morning as we were packing we had a new species to add to the week's list, a Jay.

On the way back we counted Buzzards and Kestrels as always on our trips...the final result, Buzzards 6 v Kestrels 1...not good for Kestrels at all, where are they all???

Dead Badgers outnumber dead Hedgehogs on the road too, where are all the Hedgies???

Where to next? At last the mothy has gone out - for only the third time this year.

In the meantime let us know what's missing from your outback.