Out for an hour after the rain

The Safari woke up to rain this morning. A 'slightly' welcome change after all the recent hot sunny days. 

Once the rain had stopped around lunchtime we had a quick mooch in the garden looking at the bees..

Only one  of them wasn't a bee but a bee mimicing hoverfly, a Narcissus Blub Fly. It comes in several forms, this one is mimicing Red Tailed Bumble Bee.

While making our lunch we spotted a female Blackbird that had just had a bath in the waterfall - why do they chose the running water over the higher ornamental bird-bath which you would expect would be safer from potential predators having a much wider view.

Have you ever seen such a narked looking bird in your life?

The regular male House Sparrow put in typically brief appearance at the feeder this time on the suet block which it seems to be beginning to prefer to the seed feeder.

He always seems to have his back to us

After lunch we were able to meet up with CR on his lunch break, on the way out of the front door we heard House Sparrows very close by. They were close by, there were a couple of fledglings being fed by mum in the Honeysuckle over the front gate - great to see.

We met up with CR at the start of the North Blackpool Pond Trail a short walk from Base Camp, the aim being to see some Bee Orchids. It was good to get out for some fresh air and exercise after being cooped up for three weeks. Our plan was to try to find and count them...and of course get some pics providing the rain held off. 

An extremely fresh looking Large Skipper butterfly caught our attention straight away but didn't hang around for a pic. We looked around the usual spots for Bee Orchids but didn't find any, there mus t be some somewhere though. CR found a nice looking Latticed Heath moth that was decidedly camera-shy. Less well patterned but much brighter coloured was a cracking Common Blue butterfly.

The site is only small and it didn't take long to wander round finding a fresh Small Tortoiseshell butterfly and several Common Blue damselflies. CR's excellent eyesight picked out this lovely little Picture Winged Fly on a Bramble leaf.

But did we find any Bee Orchids in the end? Of course we did, in the end we found at least 10 - somehow we sort of lost count. Most of them were just coming in to flower with one or two flowers open.

Always good to see

This one has it's two pollen 'danglers' but one looks to be fastened up to the underside of the upper petal. Has anyone seen this before?

An hour out was enough for us for starters, we were cream crackered when we got home.

Where to next? A family day tomorrow so there might not be much to report on.
In the meantime let us know who's as pretty as a picture in your outback.

Invasion of the killer jellyfish

The Safari is exaggerating slightly. The day dawned bright warm and calm, actually it was well past dawn by the time we got out of our pit. Looking at the sea on our commute we were eager to get out but for the second day in a row it wasn't possible which was a tad annoying to say the least - it was just about perfect out there. Not to worry we would be out on the beach exploring with a group of youngsters soon enough.

Today we were near the pier rather than at our usual temporary rockpooling site so it was all a bit new to us. There wasn't much standing water near the new steps but a bit of a shingle bank that had been thrown up had a few strandlines on it which looked promising. We started off there looking for pebbles, one's with stripes in them, round ones, flat ones, ones that looked like a marble; the children were only very young. All the while keeping our eyes peeled for shells and other items of interest.

Once we'd looked at this small section and not found a great lot although the kids did like the seaweed with 'armbands' to help it float - Spiral Wrack and Bladderwrack - we wandered a fair way down the beach to the nearest pool of water. A decent amount of shells had been washed up here including all the favourites, Banded Wedge  Shells, Striped Venus, Common Otter, Prickly Cockles, Common Cockles, Mussels, Pod Razors, Bean Razors, Curved Razors, Telins, Tower Shells, Whelks, Rayed Trough Shells along with lots of Masked Crab carapaces. All of which found their way into the tubs.

In the pool lots of tiny young Brown Shrimps skittered away from the nets, many weren't quick enough and found themselves in the tubs too.

Fish catcher extraodinaire from last week RC found another flat fish, not a tiny juvenile this time but a full grown whopper, dead though.

Looks like the remains of a Dab

We'd already seen quite a few mostly small jellyfish stranded on the beach but were quite unprepared for the mass of them in one corner of the pool. Lets just say there were a few more than plenty.

Almost all appeared to be dead, we didn't see any pulsating trying to swim off. The great majority were the harmless Moon Jellyfish but scattered here and there were a few orangy Lion's Manes.

At the nend of the session we gathered together to show everyone what each other had found. There's a nice big Thornback Ray mermaid's purse in the middle and a 'modern' lump of limestone that's sheared in the shape of what is almost definitely some kind of largish fossil.

The seaweed bottom left is a piece of the invasive non-native Wireweed originating from the Pacific Ocean.

Back at the office at lunchtime the sun was still strong and bright and had brought a few insects out in the wild garden. There were some Tree Bees collecting pollen and our first Large White butterfly of the year here. There's still nont that many hoverflies about although there were several of this shiny metallic Broad Centurion Flies (Chloroyia formosa).

A pair of bee mimicking Narcissus Bulb Flies were really making the most of the sunshine.

A quick look at the sea at lunchtime revealed it was very poor - other than a handful of Herring Gulls there was nothing to be seen at all.

Where to next?Back in the rockpools tomorrow.

In the meantime let us know who likes jelly in your outback.