The second week of safaris under Lockdown

The Safari like everyone else has been stuck at home. We have been able to walk the mutt around the local fields early morning but haven't taken the camera as yet. 

The days have been cold and windy but there has been some sunshine and in those sunny spells saw some Buzzard passage, we saw several but all too far away until the last one which came right over the garden not too high up.

Overhead Buzzards we like but overhead Ospreys are better. So far everyone and his uncle around here seem to have had one or more, some people or soooo greedy, over their gardens except for CR and ourselves. We've got a hotline between us in case one ofr the other hears the gulls making a racket but so far no joy but there's still time...

The sunshine also brought out some invertebrates including our first 7-Spot Ladybird of the year.

A check of the stealth-cam left out in the garden for 10 days gave us the hoped for Hedgehog. It appeared on several consecutive nights always around the same time - until the batteries died. Hopefully it'll have been recorded since we replaced the batteries but we won't know until we bring it in at the end of next week. In the meantime we'll try sneaking out to see if we can spot it for real.

Our morning walk to the park to give the mutt a run passes a garden with a little wild patch tucked in the corner obscured from the other side by some shrubbery. A couple of Violets have appeared, not sure which species as we can't reach them to have a look at the rear of the flower and pick out the leaves from the other plants growing there. Nice to see all the same.

But mostly we have been confined to the garden and towards the end of the week the weather warmed up enough to bring out some more invertebrates and on Sunday there was an explosion in the number of Eristalis Drone Fly hoverflies, one, I presume a male, held a territory perched on the laundry drying on the washing line. From there it would make sorties after other Drone Flies chasing them relentlessly if another male or mating in flight if a female - An action packed half hour and fascinating to watch until the sun went in and they all disappeared.

They weren't the only insects soaking up the rays. There were a few solitary bees about from the 'colony' in a neighbour's dry stone bank and a couple of these big black Flesh Flies.

The feeders have been fairly busy but we've not had many photo opportunities. These Goldfinches had to be snapped while sitting at our desk at the far end of the living room from the window.

We've had the usual feeder suspects, Great and Blue Tits, the latter investigating our recently erected bird box but only from the outside so far as we know, not sure they're entirely convinced it's the 'Des Res' they're after just yet. A pair of Greenfinches are regular visitors several times a day and a Robin has a quick in an out a couple of times a day and we still have occasional visitors from the female Blackbird that thinks it's a Blue Tit but we've not been able to get a better pic than last week's.

Less welcome is this chap.

A trip to the shop was combined with a dog walk on the beach at low tide and after a bit of breezy weather we had a couple of interesting finds; our first Sea Gooseberry of the year,

and a Wentle Trap Shell, these are pretty scarce along this section of beach, this is only the second we've found here in hundreds of hours wandering along the strandlines searching for anything a little out of the ordinary.

We'll leave you with Lord Snooty looking down his beak at us from his lofty perch atop next door's chimney pot.

Woodpigeon

Where to next? More of the locked down same from from the park, the occasional visit to the beach as shopping trips allow and loads from the garden we hope.

In the meantime let us know who's up and about in your locked down outback. Don't forget it's migration time and anything could appear anywhere so eyes to the skies folks - and wherever you are Stay Safe!

Summertime bird lull

The Safari has been up to the nature field with Wifey and Monty in the evenings. By that time of the day most of the enormous numbers of butterflies have gone ot roost even Monty and his pals charging through the grass only manage to disturb small numbers of Small Skippers and Meadow Browns. The birds too are mostly inconspicuous except for the gulls flying over, the Woodpigeons flying about and the House Sparrows roosting noisily in the big Blackthorn thicket.

There's ususally something to point the camera at though.

And if you like beetles there must be trillions of these Red Soldier Beetles.

Ass the evening draws on small numbers of Swifts congregate loosely overhead catching the last of the rising insects. They are usually too high for the 300mm though.

Monty likes a game of rough n tumble with his doggy friends and if there's no-one about his ball will have to do.

A sunny Sunday afternoon in the garden was reallly too quiet for insects, hardly a hoverfly to be seen - where are they all??? At CR's just over the road apparently he's had Wool Carder Bees and Hummingbird Hawk Moths in recent days. We've really struggled to find subjects to point the camera at although there's always a few Lucilia Greenbottles around the bins which gave us a chance to experiment with the extension tubes.

Other than those we almost had to resort to arty pics of the flowers!

At last we found a hoverfly but it was the only one we saw all afternoon apart from a tiny black one that was being buffeted around in the wind too much for any chance of a pic.

While trying to get pics of the hoverfly a small bee was seen among its larger Red Tailed Bumble Bee brethren. Some kind of solitary bee, possibly Halictus rubicundus again.

Then 'Catch of the day' arrived. A bright yellow 'wasp' flew past and landed. Unfortunately it landed in deep shade and the camera was set up for sunny flower tops. We managed one dodgy shot and a couple of totally useless ones as it disappeared down a gap in the timbers around the pond with its prey. One of the Ectemnius species of wasps - but which one? Is that why there's no hoverflies???

It's always good to see the little flies that dance on the Water Lily leaves in the pond. They are Poecilobothrus nobilitatus.

Psyching itself up

Stretch and ready....

Going for it!

Trying to chase off a rival - the females don't have the white tips to the wings

On Monday we were office-bound but parking the car by a demolition site the rough grassy mound held an interesting variety of wildflowers and a couple of Meadow Brown butterflies, some solitary bees as well as the chirping calls of numerous grasshoppers, a great way to start a day sat in front of the 'puter.

Yesterday early morning saw us scoping Patch 2 with LGB for half an hour. We found our first Golden Plover (P2 #53) of the autumn but missed the Kestrel half a mile or or more out to sea. Otherwise it was quiet out there with just a few Sandwich Terns going back and forth seemingly struggling to find any fish although one did catch a decent sized Sand Eel right in front of us. Thinking we'd improve our Year Bird Challenge pic of a Sandwich Tern we got the camera out and they promptly disappeared leaving us the first returning Common Gull of the autumn to photograph badly instead.

Later in the morning we played host to the local nursery kids and took them down on the beach to see what they could find. We didn't have long with them but long enough to get a few prize specimens in the bucket for them to have a look at.

At lunchtime we were joined by DW from a local beach care group and together we had a bit of a beachcomb collecting some more specimens for the afternoon's children.

All good stuff!

In the evening we had a group Rainbows visit the pond who found all the ususal stuff and then pulled out a dragonfly in real trouble. A strong wind had blown up in the afternoon and this poor creature must have been blown into the water while it was drying its wings. Duly rescued we put it in the last of the sunshine to dry out and then moved it to a sheltered spot where he morning sun would warm it -provided it didn't get blown away in the overnight gales.

Where to next? A day off work and a trip to the Southside on family duties but with the opportunity to do get some pics for our Year Bird Challenge.
In the meantime let us know who's on the way back in your outback.

Bats and back

The Safari was supposed to be leading a Moth and Bat Night last night but all day rain and increasing wind meant we were forced to pull the plug on it early evening. We got  a txt from our co-host saying she was going to go down to the meeting point at the appointed time just in case anyone hadn't got the cancellation message and turned up to find no-one there. The rain had eased off and although tche wind was still raging we decided to skip the start of yet another series of Strictly Come Drivel take out the bat detector and join her. 

It wasn't long before a lady with a torch bearing small boy arrived then another and regular Friend of the NBPT N turned up too saying he'd just seen a bat on his walk down. All was not lost, we'd get half an hour out of the evening at least even if it was way to windy and the ground far to wet to risk the electrics of the moth trap on.

It was too dark to see any birds but the quacking of the Mallards as they settled down for the night on the islands could be heard and above them an indistinct pale blob in the tips of the overhanging trees was likely to have been the resident Heron.

With the small group in tow we walked round to the far side of the lake where the taller trees should provide a bit of shelter from the wind should any bats be out. On the way we heard a couple of quiet hits on the detectors so there were bats flying around, all we needed to do now was catch up with them. And that's exactly what we did near the little bridge. N was in front by a good few yards when even from that distance we all heard his detector blast out a long series of clicks...we were in luck!

A small clearing in the canopy gave all the group reasonable sightings of the bats passing across the paler sky but they were high up at the top of the canopy.

We crossed the bridge to a more open grassy area and tried the bat attracting grass trick which worked a treat. Everyone got superb views of the Pipistrelle Bats. That was the only species we could identify from the bat detectors, the site also has Soprano Pipistrelles, Daubenton's Bats and Brown Long Eared Bats. At one time we had five in view whizzing low over our heads. We saw some behaviour we've not seen before when two bats turned off their echo-location clicks and had a bit of a chase-me chase-me barney over the best place to hunt. We stayed out well over an hour longer than we had planned, the bat action was exceptional but we only saw a small number of micro-moths and just one large macro up in the tree-tops so it was probably just as well we didn't put the trap on.

Not long before we finished we realised the battery compartment cover of our bat detector had dropped off. It was going to hard to find it among the fallen leaves from the White Poplar trees which were about the same size and once fallen, black too. We'd have to go back in daylight for a proper look.

In the morning it was obvious were we'd been stood as the ground was well and truly muddied up. There was also a huge number of blackened White Poplar leaves on the ground and despite quartering the ground in a logical manner we couldn't find our missing piece of plastic. Beneath our feet were hundreds of medium sized Craneflies and dozens of yearling Frogs. 

The most memorable aspect of our visit was the enormous number of Speckled Wood butterflies, don't think we've ever seen so many in one place before, they were uncountably everywhere!

Both phone pics

After a late breakfast we had a mooch round the garden at Base Camp. Invertebrates were what we were after but there weren't too many about and we had to work hard to find any. We looked in all the sunniest nooks and crannies finding the following.

Common Carder Bee

Marmalade Hoverfly

A tiny spider

A different tiny spider with a greenfly - the action was very fast, the greenfly was injected, wrapped, removed from the web and taken in to cover in the blink of an eye

There's still a few plants in flower including some Willowherbs

and this lovely florescent Dianthus.

Best of all was this fly of which there were a few buzzing around the sunny side of the back gate.

After a  quick lunch we decided to have a wander down the hill to the North Blackpool Pond Trail to see if we could find any butterflies to point the lens at in the pleasantly autumnal sunshine. 

The best wildflower area is just about finished now with only a few heads of Red Clover and some Ragwort offering much in the way of nectar. We didn't see any butterflies at all but did disturb a Silver Y moth which tried unsuccessfully to hide from us in the long grass.

The nice stand of Fleabane along the edge of the ditch often attracts butterflies but there were none there today.

Up the steps the remnant ancient hedge was in sunshine but catching the wind making it tricky to get these small metallic bronze flies in focus on the wildly dancing leaves. They are very eye-catching though, well worth a closer look.

There were people faffing around at the pond we wanted to look at for some dragonflies so we had to give it a miss. We carried on to the cemetery having a look at the corner pond but it was devoid of life. Further on a family of Mistle Thrushes were pulling worms out of the moss at the edges of some of the older stones.

There are two sort of out of sight ponds, but not out of sight enough too many fishermen visit and one of them has found a rather large Swan Mussel and broken it open for bait - what a waste!

The other pond is less visited and normally very clear. It wasn't today there was a horrible algal bloom.

What's going on there??? And then we saw it, or was it them? Bally fishermen have released a/some big Carp in there, we saw at least one stout back break the surface. They must have been rummaging around in the sediment recycling all the nutrients that had been locked away for decades. Not food for any of the other wildlife in this pond and they'll be impossible to get out, sadly the pond is pretty much wrecked by our friendly neighbourhood environmental vandals. Very disappointing and only a brief and distant view of a Brown Hawker - where are all the other dragonflies today, they should have been out in force.

At the furthest point of our walk we didn't take enough notice of a falcon that went high over our head. We're not sure why we dismissed it at first but then turned for another look but by now it was much further away. It did look a bit slight and small for a Peregrine and was too short in the tail and not 'flying right' for a Kestrel - did we just ignore a Hobby???

We wandered back towards the pond we couldn't visit earlier to find it empty now. There were just a few Moorhens on there, count them and there were a few more scattered around the far side out of shot

Turning to leave we saw a movement over the grass below us, a smart looking parasitic wasp - probably a female Ichneumon deliratorius. A fine looking beast.

A few yards further on a bit of a surprise awaited us. We thought we heard a Rook calling, odd because we can't recall ever seeing them here before and they are as rare as rocking horse do-do over Base Camp only a few hundred yards away. And there away across the horse field there were indeed a couple of Rooks.

Our last snap was a butterfly, at last, a nice Small White perched up on a White Poplar leaf.

Where to next? Back to Patch 2 tomorrow.
In the meantime let us know who's dumped what in your outback