What are we playing at?

The Safari hasn't had a lot of luck recently. We've been out n about but not seen a great lot to shout about...or get any pics of really.

Back on Patch 1 the big Parasol Mushroom from our Oddball Bat post now looks like this...or did look like that a coupla days ago, we didn't check it yesterday due to horrendous thunderstormy rain nor did we today either.

Having a bit more time to ourselves at Base Camp hasn't produced the goods although this Grey Squirrel is the first we've seen in the garden for quite some time, it was on next door's feeders for ages before it hopped over the fence.

Taken in the gloom through the double glazed kitchen window

Also over Base Camp was the first Meadow Pipit of the autumn, just the one - no sign of any migrant floodgates opening yet.

We had an early morning three hours round the nature reserve seeing very little at all and not once needing to raise the camera. Best of a very slow morning was a mixed flock of tits and warblers in which was a single Lesser Whitethroat. Insects fared a little better with at least four Red Admirals seen around the reserve and a cluster of four Small Tortoiseshells butterflies in the top corner nectaring on the abundant Hoary Ragwort flowers. At least something is abundant this year!
At the Viewing Platform therre was no sign of the Otter nor the Bittern - there never is for us! But in the still very leafy Sycamore trees above our head a small bird was flitting about we did our best to get the bins on it but it just kept disappearing behind the foliage to be relocated a yard or more away only to instantaneously disappear again. Was there a hint of red on its back end? Did we really see that or just think we did after the event? It called several times a loud strident soo-iit as it moved about the tree tops. After a minute or so of losing it among the leaves and Monty getting restless we moved on but had we just ignored a Redstart which would have been our first at the reserve for a number of years and our first self-found one for a long time?

A venture to the cliffs to look for Bottlenose Dolphins didn't go as planned when Monty legged it down to the beach so we had to abandon our initial plan and once got him back under control had a wander along Chat Alley where we successfully found some chats, five Wheatears, none of which would pose for a pic. They were very flighty but it was busy with joggers, cyclists, dog walkers and fishermen driving past to their favourite spots.

Yesterday we met up with GB after the storm. The initial plan was to head out east but with lost time we just stayed local and had a mooch along the northern prom. Worth it too. At least five Grey Seals one of which was very close in but due to the earlier very heavy rain we hadn't brought the camera out....dohhhhh...and it didn't rain and we were over-dressed in our waterproofs! On the golf course and beach we counted 9 and three Wheatears respectively but reckon that there were almost definitely many more. It's be interesting to see how many more and what we missed when Fleetwood Bird Observatory post their tally for 31st August. We did get a good count of at least 120 Sandwich Terns fishing very close inshore catching Sand Eels and then roosting on the beach, joined by eight Turnstones, the 'largest' flock we've seen so far this autumn. Out in the bay it was just coming up to low tide and there were a lot of Cormorants roosting on the recently formed King's Scar (labelled as Rosmic Island on Google Maps - would be much better if people kept off it though as we've been told that good numbers of Grey Seals have been seen hauled out on it recently.) an impressive shingle island, how big is it going to get in the years to come??? There were several Cormorants in the middle distance fishing but we failed to find GB any Harbour Porpoises - he reckons he jinxes us, he could be right as conditions were bob on for spotting any cetaceans that might have been out there.

The local Love my Beach beach cleaning volunteers were out doing their thing and had put some interesting and too-large-for-their-bags items on the sea wall. One of those items of interest was a gull skull

Another thing we noticed was the large number of Garden Snails out for a slime along the prom, most but not all were heading towards the beach. Was it something to do with the overnight rain, do they eat seaweed, did this one have a towel and windbreak to take advantage of the sunny weather down on the sand??? All very odd, you'd think the osmotic potential of the salty sand and vegetation (not that there's much of that just a few leaves of Sea Lyme Grass and even lesser amounts of other species) would be enough to do a snail in but headed beachwards they were.

We know where it's going but why - Answers on a postcard please

This morning we were supposed to join CR on a jaunt to the big wetland reserve on the Southside but once again our plans were thwarted by poor Monty honking up in the most wretched way all night. So insead of heading towards exotic birds we're heading tto the vets instead.

We took him for a quick trawl round Patch 1, you could tell he's under the weather as his tail was down all the way round. It's usually up like a flag and wagging non-stop. The earlier light rain hadn't dropped anything exciting and nothing was heard or seen going over but we did come across a Great Spotted Woodpecker, they seem to have moved back again after being lost when their favourite dead tree was cut down, a Coal Tit, a Goldcrest, a Blackcap and a small flock of Long Tailed Tits. Not a total dead loss then.  

Here's a quiz for you - who else do you know wanders round with, bins, a camera, a dog and occasionally peers into roadside gullies? And then finds one to photograph as it has a bit of self-contained jungle growing in it. Go on own up - you do it too, don't you?

We received some pics from one of our recent Moth and Bat Nights from organiser HP today, we're sure he won't mind us posting them on here.

A good crowd of eager wildlife enthusiasts

Feeling how soft and velvety the fur is on a mummified Pipistrelle bat

Just how well can moths see in the dark? Look at the tapetum on that! Well it's probably not actually a tapetum in the vertebrate sense but it serves the same function

If anyone would like the Safari to do local-ish wildlife events, guided walks, talks for groups, schools etc for a reasonable fee please get in touch.
And there endeth our second week of retirement. What have we learned? Even though we have loads of time nothing seems to go to plan and if it can go wrong it will go wrong...Things can only get better - sounds like that could be a good title for a song!

Where to next? We can feel a bit of seawatching coming on tomorrow morning, after a just post-dawn mooch round patch 1 of course.

In the meantime let us know who's going down the drain in your outback.

A lovely warm day on the beach

The Safari forgot to look for Old Ladies and Gothics (don't moths have great names!) in the garden at Base Camp last night; these two species are being seen in friends’ gardens not too far from Base Camp but so far we’ve never had either species grace our Buddleia with their presence.

So a minor set back last night but easily rectified by a crop of decent warm weather coming up hopefully one or both species will be found before to long.

This morning the strong overnight wind hadn’t abated and the sea was far too choppy to stand any chance of seeing any mammals; there’s been a flurry of Harbour Porpoise sightings away down the far end of the South-side recently and it would appear that the pod of six Bottle Nosed Dolphins we saw a few weeks ago are still kicking around offshore but over the horizon.

Far closer than the horizon from Patch 2 this morning were two Arctic Skuas. One of which harried a Herring Gull in to giving it a meal...not sure we’d relish the contents of a Herring Gulls crop/stomach but it’s obviously manna from heaven for the skuas.

Not a great lot of anything else out there other than a few distant terns.

After a quick cuppa we were back out leading a large group of young kiddies on their rockpooling session. The wind last night meant there was some interesting stuff washed up on the beach. The very first thing we picked up was a White Piddock shell which are not at all common or regular on our beach; unbroken too which is unusual for this very fragile species.

That seemed to be a good omen as before too long the nets were hoiking out huge numbers of small Brown Shrimps and a good many Common Prawns.  It wasn’t long before the first live crab appeared in one of the trays although we did need a microscope to see it properly, it was a tiny juvenile; bigger ones were eventually netted. 

Amongst the shrimps was another small wriggly thing that darted around the tray hiding under whatever was nearest – we eventually got to grips with it and identified it as a very recently hatched Blenny no more than 6 or 7mm long. What a find!

Most of the usual suspects were found, Pod and Common Razor Shells, Prickly and Common Cockles, Banded Wedge Shells, Rayed Trough Shells, and many more until one young girl showed us a larger than usual specimen of Iceland Cyprine and they are usually pretty big! But her success was short lived as another young lady brought us an enormous and very fresh Edible Oyster – great news and probably find of the year! What a beauty as a certain fisherman used to say...probably still does.

The sharp, undamaged frills show this specimen to be a fesh one and not one that has been rolling around in the tide for a good while...soooo there must be a small population out there somewhere...which is good.

A mystery item was brought to us to identify and it remains very much a mystery, possibly some a skull from some species of fish or other? Never seen anything quite like it in all our born days! Our marine biologist guru DB had a tentative guess at the skull of a Scorpion Fish.

Some of the pots hold anemones of various species and we wanted to show some of the older children ‘Nemo’s home’ but instead found a couple of live Sand Mason Worms, their cases are washed up by the million but we’ve never seen live ones at the top of the beach before even the ‘highest’ ones are only normally exposed by the very lowest low tides.

All most very excellent.

A lunchtime peer through the scope was nowhere near as productive with just a number of distant terns and one very distant Gannet to show for our efforts.

Where to next? Day off tomorrow to head back down the motorway to see m'laddo in hossy so there's a very good chance the moff trap will go on overnight.

In the meantime let us know what's all washed up in your outback.