Up north on the limestone hills

The Safari picked up BD after breakfast and pointed the Land Rover at the motorway for a day's safari-ing around the limestone hills on the county border. We had a few targets in mind, a couple or three birds and a butterfly or two and an orchid.

Let's just say the day didn't quite go according to plan, the birds being abandoned early on despite adding little to our Year List Challenge total, although from Monika's posts she's been totally Orca'd-out recently and done little birding too. We think we're still in the lead by a feather or two.
Our first stop was at the quarry we've been a thousand times but we discovered that BD, not being a driver, had never had the opportunity to visit before. Here was the chance of two of our target species, Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary and Dark Red Helloborine. We had a better chance of the former as we hadn't heard if the latter had appeared this year, we last saw it three years ago. The strong and quite cool wind meant butterflies were in short supply. The wildflowers were quite spectacular around the car park area.

Common Spotted Orchid

At the other end of the height scale were lots of tiny Eyebright plants.

The predominant colour of the flowers was yellow, Ladies Bedstraw, Ladies Mantle, Hawkweeds, but numerous amongst the yellows were many intensely purple heads of about to open Majoram. 

The out of bounds rock face gave us a stark example of why it is out of bounds, a crack and rumble while we had a our heads down photographing the plants a sizable rock fell from high up the old quarry face. A look from the safety of the fence had us looking at a large patch of English Stonecrop apparently growing straight out of the solid rock.

Our favourite wasn't one of the most numerous but they are the most delicate of colours, Field Scabious.

For the next site we bypassed the bird reserve as BD hadn't had a look at another old quarry before. This one has a walk in rather than an one site car park. The track takes you through some nice woods where BD's observant eyes spotted a couple of tiny snails worthy of pointing the lens at and a very small moth that turned out to be one we've had in the garden at Base Camp, Pammene regiana.

No idea what the snail is though

And that was one of the larger ones he found!

Within the quarry the plants were delectable and with the additional shelter there were butterflies everywhere.

Betony

Common Blue

Common Green Grasshopper

Ringlet butterflies were everywhere almost as numerous as the Meadow Browns. This is a species not found locally for some bizarre reason, they're pretty common almost everywhere else. But the first one ever for the Fylde was seen the day before after strong easterly winds. There's a strong chance of it colonising our area in the nest few years.

The plants were superb but with nothing really different to the first quarry, lots of Common Spotted Orchids but nothing overly exotic...that is until we found a couple of Broad Leaved Helliborines.

Around the grassland were lots of ant hills. BD put his hand too them and found them to be rather warmer than the surrounding soil. A bit of a scrape of the surface revealed the Yellow Meadow Ants to be only a few millimetres below the surface.

Too small to get a proper pic of

A butterfly that wasn't a Meadow Brown or Ringlet caught our eye and fortunately it landed on a bit of a pathway and it gave itself up as a Grayling - a nice find.

Part of the rockface has some interesting fossils in it which are apparently the trails of worm like creatures, Their position on the face means the surface that is now vertical was once horizontal.

Our best find here was one of the first we saw. Due to lack of experience with the fritillaries we expected this to be Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary but once back at Base Camp news came though from BD that he'd IDd it as one of our rarest butterflies High Brown Fritillary...the only frit we saw all day and it didn't stick around long; what a great fluke.

We moved on again and once again avoided the bird reserve going instead to a nearby Butterfly Conservation reserve instead. 

Meadow Browns and Ringlets were order of the day but no fritillaries and no Northern Brown Argus which apparently are the site specialities.

All our recent sightings of Burnet Moths have been Narrow Bordered 5-spot Burnets so it was nice to come across a Six Spot Burnet for a change.

The extra heat of the path was too much for a teneral Common Darter to resist, just like the Grayling at the previous site.

Better, or  at least far less often seen by us, was a cracking Southern Hawker that settled on the outer twigs of an Ash tree just at eye level.

Eventually we did get to the bird reserve but with little time left we only got a s far as the feeders.

Lots of Chaffinches

Lots of young Blue and Great Tits too and some juvenile Coal Tits, a young Marsh Tit put in a couple of brief appearances too.

 A young Great Spotted Woodpecker was on the feeders too.

We did get our best pic of a Bullfinch, OK so its far from any good but it is our best effort yet...maybe next time it'll be closer and not in the dark.

The reserve has just built and opened a very impressive tall viewing platform from which the views are nothing like you've ever seen on the reserve and we've never seen in all our visits from about 1971 

There were Otters frockingly in the water not long before we climbed the steps.

Out on the mud there were few Lapwings and among them a juvenile Starling, a white male Ruff and a couple of Dunlins.

We didn't have time to give it proper justice but we can imagine there'll be some great views of the Marsh Harriers and Bitterns being seen over the next few months. 

A great day out with loads of sights and sounds, we never mentioned the impossible to photograph swarm of solitary bees - can you have a swam of solitary bees? And we heard a Green Woodpecker, still no photo opportunity for BD though.

Can you top that for a day out??? Brillliant!

But then today after all that we were totally trumped when our Extreme Photographer sent through a pic he'd taken with his phone on the patch of rough ground over the road from his office on the industrial estate...

Where to next? It's the weekend and we might have another change of scenery tomorrow.

In the meantime let us know who's flukily rare in your outback.

A feathery mix from west Lancashire from our now Welsh Extreme Photographer

The Safari only managed a few dreary minutes not long after dawn and fewer very damp minutes at lunchtime.

Easily best sighting of the day was an adult Gannet cruising round over the heads of about 20 Cormorants and  five Red Throated Divers were seen.

At lunchtime the visibility was dreadful and we didn't stay long, not even to look for the now assumed AWOL Black Redstart.

Totally lacking pics today we are very grateful for our Extreme Photographer lets us show  you what he's been up to on his few days back in Lancashire with his new camera/lens combo

Great Grey Shrike - Lytham Moss

Robin - Marton Mere nature reserve

(Eastern) Grey Squirrel - Marton Mere nature reserve

Great Spotted Woodpecker - Marton Mere nature reserve

His pics should be good once he's got the hang of the controls!
Where to next? The weekend starts here and there will deffo be some wildlife involved.
In the meantime let us know who brightened the dreariness in your outback.

Spectacular dipping followed by spectacular scoring

The Safari loaded up Frank just after dawn and pointed the Solihull Special southbound down the motorway for the annual rendezvous with our southern buddies at Moore Nature Reserve. The motorway gave us our only Kestrel of the day and a couple  of Jays.

We meet up at this time of year as the Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers are quite active and the trees don't have many leaves making it still possible to see them. There is a good selection of other stuff to be found and at this time of year anything can turn up...and it did!

Wandering round to the LSPker 'tree' we staked it out for a good while without much success. The usual small woodland stuff was about Wrens, Robins, Blue and Great Tits, Nuthatch etc but not our specific quarry. We gave up and decided to stroll round to the feeders. As we left we heard aBlackcap (140) which all three of us had been hearing for a few minutes but none of registered it as year bird...the penny dropped with a decided clang!  At the feeders a similar suite of species was present with the addition of Reed Buntings and Coal Tits, but no Willow Tits :-( A Great Spotted Woodpecker drummed solidly nearby and two Jays flew across the back.

Returning to the tree we did another stake outonly to learn from some other birders that had we stayed five more minutes before we'd have seen it....dohhhh. This time we had more luck as we heard it call the 'Kestrel' call and ddo a bit of drumming...Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (141) on the list, but we'd still like to get a glimpse of the stripy little fella. After another good half hour of standing round we got the briefest fly past with totally untickable views as it by-passed the 'tree' and shot off into the woods in the distance.

No chance of catching up with it so it was off on a trek to see if we could track down a recently seen Ring Ouzel. More Blackcaps and a plethora of Chiffchaffs were heard on the way. We stopped at a hide which overlooks very little and while watching a Buzzard lazily meandering its way over the site a Swallow (142) zipped past well above it. 

At the river we learnt that the Ring Ouzel had been showing well but a 4x4 had come past laden with hay to feed the horses in the field and it hadn't been seen since. A long wait ensued with the briefest of glimpses of something that could, with a lot of imagination, have been a thrush sp. 

Our two mates wandered off after about half an hour on the search for spiders and all other things invertebrate

...then just as we were beginning to give up hope there it was, about 50 yards to the left of where we'd been looking - a shout to the others and Ring Ouzel (143) was in the bag and showed nicely in the rather duff light for a good few minutes - success!

No Sand Martins were seen on the river but a very nice Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena fulva)was potted by AB.

The walk back to the 'tree' gave us our first Comma butterfly of the year.

Once again at the tree we learnt we'd just missed the LSPecker...how unlucky can three lads get. We hung around hopefully anyway and are glad we did as we found a splendid 3rd winter Glaucous Gull (144) in a mass of gulls circling overhead..TWICE!!! Oh the Safari just loves gulls!

Giving up on the LSPecker with time running out for Haddy and Anno we headed back to the car park aiming for a brew and a butty and picked up a fine male Orange Tip on the way.

With flasks of coffee drunk and butties munched the other two depated and we were left - what to do? Head home or have  another stake out...just in case. With it being quite early and not needing to rush back to Base Camp we opted for the stake out...and oh boy are we glad we did...

OK they aren't feather perfect but hand held at that range through the twiggy stuff while shaking like a leaf with excitement we're quite pleased with them!

A great end to a great day out - thanks guys, same again next year?

Where to next? Back on Patch 2 where it would seem some goodies have been seen today.

In the meantime let us know what looks like  tree climbing miniature Zebra in your outback.