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.

Too busy to blog

The Safari has been out looking for wildlife every day this week with much of our time taken up in the evenings with Brownie and Beavers groups. They've been working in the pond and have successfully released a tiny Froglet in to the garden. Our work's pond is raised with high sides so there's no way it could have escaped in to big wide world on its own. There's at least one big tadpole still in there too.

We've been so busy educating the kids in the wonders of wildlife that we've not stopped to take any pics. But then again there's only so many gruesome pics of dragonfly nymphs chomping down on poor unfortunate 3-Spined Sticklebacks you readers can take. 

We've had a couple of brief visits to Patch 1 with Monty to see if we could increase our tally of just a single White Letter Hairstreak. No joy with those as no more have been seen but we did note a large increase in the number of Small Skippers.

While waiting for the WLHs after some afternoon rain we spotted an arty spider's web by our knee.

Mid-week we were down on the beach with school groups for a couple of days. Great fun and some great finds like a small unknown species of Bearded Rockling, a few Blennies and a handful of tiny fry from some unknown fish. Neither of the two groups could catch any Sand Gobies though, imagine being outsmarted by a tiny fish with the brain the size of a pin-head. Yes, catching those calls for teamwork and some serious stealth, something we were sadly lacking this week. 

Much easier to catch was this stranded Barrel Jellyfish.

It's a small one

After doing the health and safety talk to the teachers and children we broke the don't touch any jellyfish rule and picked this one up. Gathering the class around we got two of them to stand next to us for a teacher to get a pic. Fully dangling (it was well heavy - arm achingly heavy waiting for the not so quick class to assemble) it was almost as big as the little Year 1 children! 

They continued to collect their shells and whatever else they could find. Then one child called out 'Jellyfish!!!!!!' exactly as they had been instructed to do. We headed off to inspect it and drawn a no-go line in the sand around it with the end of a net but found it not to be a jellyfish at  all. It was a cluster of Squid eggs. Only a small one and well battered but still the first bunch of Squid eggs we've seen on the beach for a few years. Interesting - what were we saying about the dolphins a couple of posts back...

Unfortunately despite the excellent sea conditions the Bottlenose Dolphins didn't put in an appearance for these children from an inland school. That didn't bother them too much they still had a whale of a time. It's very gratifying when at the end of the day and they're getting on the bus to head back to school one of them says 'Thanks sir, that's the best school trip I've ever been on'...but please note he was only six years old and hasn't been on many school trips! Not to worry we're sure he'll remember it for the rest of his life and tell his friends how brilliant our beach is and what they should do and look for if they come down with their families during the summer holidays.

We've got a little guessing game for you now...sadly that was our last school session ever :-( ...but why? NO - we haven't been arrested!!!

Where to next? Family duties at the weekend but we might be able to get out on Safari somewhere for an hour or so.

In the meantime let us know who's holding up the specimens in your outback

Missed the biggie of the year - no, not the Amur Falcon

The Safari was later in to work than normal due to the enforced office move even though we were working at our 'normal' place. That had a bit of a bad knock on effect. Back at Base Camp we missed a call telling us there were half a dozen Bottlenose Dolphins close inshore and by the time we'd got the message it was well after our usual leaving time so we got frustratingly stuck in the morning commuter run that previously we've avoided. We went straight to the watchpoint to meet LB and FB who put us on to the Bottlenose Dolphins right away letting us use their scopes as we'd brought no optics with us. Unfortunately they were now well to the south and a long way off. Then LB showed us a sketch he'd just made in his notebook - a Risso's Dolphin. Had we been on our normal routine we might just have caught it! We're not totally sure but it could well be the first of its species viewed from our promenade for about 20  or more years! Now our mind started racing - what was it doing there so close inshore? just hooked up with the local(?) Bottlenose Dolphins that seem to circle the wider bay chasing what exactly? Are they looking for Salmon approaching the rivers? If a Risso's Dolphin is with them have they been after Squid? Are there any Squid egg masses on the beach to support that hypothesis? That's the wonder of wildlife always far more questions to tax the brain than answers.

The following day we did have optics with us but the wind had picked up and the sea was choppy making viewing cetaceans difficult although we did have a Grey Seal close to the wall. Here's a bizarre animal fact we didn't know - Atlantic Grey Seals are rarer than African Elephants! and salmon farms are still allowed to shoot them! 

The sun came out at lunchtime and it was quite warm so we had a mooch with the camera for ten minutes or so. A few Black Headed Gulls have began arriving back on th beach after their breeding season. Just adults so far.

As always there's a few Herring Gulls cruising about looking at what the dropping tide might provide.

This one found a Weaver Fish which have a painful toxic spine on their dorsal fin which the gull had to wrangle out, which took a few minutes, before it could be safely swallowed. 

Thankfully none of our children's groups have ever caught a Weaver Fish (touch wood) but they are quite numerous, the anglers often catch them, and this one was only a few yards from the sea wall. As a regular beach-goer we always recommend folk wear suitable footwear and not go barefoot on the sands. 

Ohh nice - just had to break off writing this rubbish cos we saw Swifts passing the window. There's four of them whizzing really low through and over the garden. Brilliant things - we've got the phone playing their screaming so they might notice our Swift nestbox. Only a couple of photo opportunities, they're to quick for our limited viewing space.

It's been pretty lively around the garden at Base Camp today with plenty of comings and goings of juvenile Greenfinches, Goldfinches, Blue and Great Tits and their parents as well as a Robin and a passing Swallow or two. OK so after that little interlude it's back to the tales of safari's.

Last week we went to the zoo to see the rare orchid that had been found there. This week we returned to see if it was in flower yet. It wasn't for the simple reason that had we looked at it properly with our specs on last time we'd have seen that what we thought was a furled flower spike was in fact the remains of a well nibbled midrib...dohhhh. The main stem has been broken off so it's not going to flower this year. It has hardly changed during the week.

Yesterday we had an early start at the nature reserve and enjoyed the peace of early morning with two reeling Grasshopper Warblers, numerous Sedge and Reed Warblers and a bucketful of Reed Buntings. No sign of the Bittern but we did hear a couple of Curlews (MMLNR #77) and watched a Great Spotted Woodpecker (MMLNR #78 - surely we've seen one here before this and neglected to put on our spreadsheet?) fly almost the length of the reserve. Our two target species for our Year Bird Challenge failed to put in an appearance although we did hear several Blackcaps - we'll have to wait a few weeks until they're more out in the open eating berries, same with the no-show and silent Lesser Whitethroats.

In the afternoon we headed out east to the picturesque river valley for a walk with Wifey and Monty. It was busy so the chance of adding a Dipper to our Year Bird Challenge was slim to remote, we'll have to wait for a quiet mid-week opportunity to get out that way for those. There were the shrill calls of young birds in the canopy but far too many dogs in the river for even the Grey Wagtails to show up more than once. The shallow pools are just too inviting for mutts on a warm day, 

and those flippin owners do nothing to discourage their charges from running down the banks and into the water - most actively encourage them after all the countryside is only a place to kill things or let your dogs disturb everything.

Note the slugs and snails on the rock, the water level has risen recently, last time we were here we were able to sit on this rock, getting to it without gettin g our feet wet - bit like the molluscs but they could be stranded out there now - will have to check next time we go.

This morning a jaunt around Patch 1 was a little late as we missed the early morning sunshine and were back in the ISO Stupid gloom - the default for Lancashire according to ex-pat Lancastrian SP - he's not wrong!
We wanted butterflies - we got a (singular) butterfly, a male Meadow Brown.

and a rather dapper bee mimicing hoverfly Volucella pellucens.

Too gloomy to wait for long for nothing to happen at the White Letter Hairstreak tree but we did find our first ripening Blackberry of the year there. That could be a problem the White Letter Hairstreaks are only just emerging and almost all the Bramble flowers have gone over and there's no Creeping Thistle this year, the Bramble thicket having smothered them out. The butterflies will have to make do with honeydew up in the canopy where they are harder to spot.

Later in the afternoon the sun came out and we were able to shoot back out for half an hour for another look. On the way we met good friend PL on his way out of the butterfly zone looking a bit dejected. We had a good chat about all things local nature and eventually he decided to come with us back into the breach. It was a good job he did as he'd have been a bit miffed if we'd have found one minutes after he'd left. And that's what happened within a few minutes of seeing a couple of battling skippers a smaller duller butterfly caught our eye landing on or near a Bramble flower. joy of joys it was what we thought it was going to be. Two cameras rattled away but even through the bins we couldn't see the white 'W', good job those megapixels were able to pick it out.

A bit of a relief to find them on Patch 1 again, it's always a bit twitchy seeing the Elms fading away and hoping that that's not the tree they are dependent on. But then the dead Elms of last year start sprouting again and hopefully the new shoots will last long enough to be come available for egg laying in the future.

The afternoon was topped off by a Comma that landed almost too close to get a pic.

What a great way to end the weekend!
Where to next? In to the lion's den that is the town centre offices tomorrow, wonder if we'll see any wildlife around there.
In the meantime let us know who's

Better not to be on the wrong end of the food chain

The Safari has had another busy week entertaining groups of children at our work's pond. Before all the fun started we took Monty for a wander across the dunes with Wifey and came across these little gems, Narrow Bordered Five Spot Burnet moths.

It was a warm sunny afternoon but other than these beauts was very disappointing for insects, it was almost as if the whole dune system had been sprayed with insecticide; in a couple of hours out we only saw a handful of bumble bees and not a single butterfly and hardly any other unidentified/unidentifiable little flying things - all very worrying.

Monday saw the pond ransacked again, the poor inhabitants must be getting pretty fed up of being netted, hoiked out and dumped unceremoniously in a white tray! This year is a little odd as there's loads of 3-Spined Sticklebacks and a good number of Darter dragonfly nymphs, and not a lot else...wonder why??? Have they eaten everything else between them?

And when there's nothing else to eat they eat each other much to the excitement and/or horror depending on their point of view. Some children even suggested that the fish should be rescued - bit late for that - but we told them it was the food chain in action and how would they like it if they were half way through chomping their favourite grease-burger when someone whipped it away from them.

The following day yet more nets were being swirled around the unfortunate pond and yet more inhabitants hoiked out. This time there were a small number of damselfly nymphs brought out, where were they the day before??? And once again they witnessed the food chain in action...you really don't want to be a small stickleback fry in this pond!

In all our years pond dipping we don't think we've ever seen a damselfly nymph tackle prey that large! The little fish wriggled and wriggled in a vain attempt to break free but the nymph wasn't about to surrender its meal. Eventually all was eaten up to the gill covers.

Gruesome stuff!

A meeting at the nature reserve saw us arrive a little early and with a bit of time to kill before the allotted hour. The warm humid air hung heavy with a Song Thrush's liquid ditty - for once there was little or no human noise pollution to be heard, lovely! We headed off along the embankment with the intention of going round as far as the viewing point for the back of the scrape.  Coming towards us was another birder so stopping to ask him if he'd 'seen owt' we got chatting. It transpired we'd last met at the local Waxwings in the winter and told him about the Iceland Gull which he'd toddled off to look for and was lucky enough to see it straight away and then moments later spotted the Otter. not a bad day in the field that! We didn't see the Iceland Gull all winter, not for want of trying either, and haven't seen the Otter for at least a couple of years now.

We never found out if there was anything on the scrape as he said he'd come to see if he could see the Bittern. Some chance as we thought 'ours' was possibly the one seen at the 'reserve we don't mention by name' on the Southside the previous day. But now his luck ran true and as we were chatting it lifted from the reeds in the corner to our left and flew briefly to drop somewhere near the new Sand Martin nesting bank. We had no chance of a pic as it was only in view fore a second or so but both of us were well chuffed to have seen it. A Bittern (164, MMLNR 76) in July is a good find at the nature reserve on a dull day. The 64b million dollar question now is will it stick through the autumn and winter? And if it does is it a male and will it start booming next spring? Ohh there's a fair few fingers crossed!

He went off very happy indeed and we had a few more minutes to kill so hung around enjoying the multitude of families of Reed and Sedge Warblers and Reed Buntings, the latter seem to have a had a very good season here so far. In the distance an odd looking gull caught our eye - after the July Bittern a July Iceland Gull???

We rushed round to the hide form where we hoped we would be able to see it on the water but we couldn't, it wasn't with the small number of other gulls bathing in front of us. We'd seen it drop down so it was probably further to our left obscured behind the tall reeds growing up the bank. 

It was and we saw it briefly when it must have finished bathing and went to loaf in the scrape again out of sight behind tall reeds.

Then the rain that had been threatening all morning arrived and it lashed it down. Not wanting to get everything soaked through we stayed in the hide and missed our meeting time. The rain continued to hammer down and we sat it out in the hide watching motionless through the corner of our eye the comings and goings of the pair of Blackbirds feeding nestlings on the ledge above the door behind us.

We also kept an eye out for the Bittern in case it stalked a reed edge across the way. Herons flying about kept us on our toes, one might just turn into the Bittern, but one flying across the scrape flushed the gulls and up popped our quarry. What a beauty, but what a weirdo - not an Iceland Gull at all but a Herring Gull with an asymmetrical wing pattern. One wing normal, the other borrowed off an over-sized Black Headed Gull - How mad is that!

Duff pics but it is July so we're still on ISO Stupid on the camera

A great find and one we wouldn't have seen properly if at all had we set off to our meeting at the right time and we'd deffo missed the 'close-up' views had there not been a torrential rain storm.

It all goes to show there's always some thing to new to see when out on safari whether it be gruesome, unusual, beautiful, extraordinary or just plain weird and of course it's guaranteed if you don't get out you won't see nowt!

Where to next? We'll be back on to Patch 2 for a couple of days then what we don't know because we've had a forced office move to the town centre, all a bit ridiculous as we've loads of school and other kids groups to attend to between now and the end of the summer, but hey-ho the powers that be always know best...don't they!

In the meantime let us know who's being weird and wonderful in your outback.

#30DaysWild is over...or is it?

The Safari has been busy with all sorts of groups this week. We've played host to school classes, Rainbows, Brownies, Beavers, Guides and volunteers from the zoo doing their #30DaysWild challenge.

The schools pond dipping sessions have thrown up a couple of surprises. The first day the class watched a female Emperor dragonfly laying her eggs on vegetation in the pond right under the children's noses - none of them had ever seen a dragonfly before and didn't know insects could get that big, some even thought it was too brightly coloured to be an insect so must be a bird! Whether insect or bird it was an awesome spectacle for them to witness.

The following day's class the children watched a dragonfly nymph catch and devour a small 3-spined Stickleback - they found that awesome if a bit gruesome too. But generally apart from prodigious number s of Wandering Snails, darter sp dragonfly nymphs (probably Common Darter) and hundreds of 3-spined Sticklebacks there wasn't much for them to catch. Until one of them, and then others, pulled out a tadpole. Where had they come from surely the pond sides are too high for a Frog to jump up and over into the water. We surmise that someone nearby has a pond which was in danger of drying out during the hot spell last week and 'rescued' them in to our larger and deeper pond. One one of the last evening sessions a Brownie caught a Pond Skater, we've not seen one on there for a long time. But where are all the Bloodworms, Diving Beetles, Back Swimmers, Front Swimmers and Blue Tailed Damselfly nymphs? It's a funny old year in the pond!

The volunteers from the zoo had arranged to do a beach clean with us."We do like to be beside the seaside...but we don't like to see the beach covered in litter.

6 big bags of rubbish were eventually collected and taken off the sands - well done everyone

Perhaps the most disturbing piece of litter was this length of fishing tackle which had continued fishing after it had been snapped off and ended up killing a small Smooth Hound pup. We often find lost tackle with hooks and breakaway weights waiting to catch a fish, gull, dog's paw of child's foot. We think the anglers who lost their gear should come back as soon as the tide drops and try tto retrieve as much as they possibly can - that would be better than leaving in/on the beach - and while they were doing that they could pick up all the litter they leave behind where they stand too - Anglers are supposed to be protectors of the environment aren't they - well we don't think so!

The children's' best find was a tiny shell. So small we're quite surprised, but really pleased, that it was actually spotted and picked up. No not the pretty Sea Slug skeleton, the pink Acteon tornatitlis the other one. In all our years doing beach events with the children we've never seen anything as small as this so we went into detective mode and called on the expertise of our marine biologist friend DB who suggested it might be a Mediterranean/European Atlantic coast species that has been washed in  by the currents, Tritonalia aciculata. A quick search of the data-bases suggested that this could be a first for British waters - what an awesome find that would be for a Yr2 child!!!

Now not totally convinced with DB's ID we put the pic on the British Marine Life Study Society's Facebook page and they came back with a more likely ID of Netted Dog Whelk - albeit a very small one!

They also found several specimens of Dead Man's Fingers, which looks a bit like a Sponge but is actually a colonial polyp related to sea anemones and jellyfish.

At the end of the week we had a job to do at the zoo with Sustainability Officer LW, looking through some of the pics from their moth trapping event and a quick check of their data from the Native Species Bioblitz they did while we were away  in Cornwall.

Once we'd ID'd a few moth pics and asked for others to be sent on for more in-depth analysis (ie micro moths we can never remember the names of) LW said one of her keeper colleagues had found a rare orchid in the Dinosaur area and would we like to see it. Well we're never one to resist a rare orchid so of we went. We walked through the exhibit and back looking for what we supposed would be a Marsh Orchid and going bu the other Marsh Orchids locally were looking for a finished flower spike. We had no luck at all. LW then called her colleague who told us it was near one of the T. rex models. Again we looked and looked without success. Eventually JP was called out to show us exactly where it was. And no wonder we couldn't find it, it wasn't under the T. rex at all but a Pentasaurus!

No, we've never heard of a Pentasaurus either! And no it wasn't a Marsh Orchid spike so we were looking for the totally wrong thing. It was actually a battered and bruised specimen of a helleborine species but which one?

We initially thought it was probably Broad Leaved Helleborine but info from Twitter suggested it was much more likely to be the much much rarer Dune Helleborine which is found locally a few miles away, on the dunes of all places. We've arranged to get back into the zoo to monitor its progress and get some pics - an awesome find! And then JP casually mentioned "we've got some other orchids - would you like to see those?" Of course we would,, ta v muchly! He took us to a currently out-of-bounds area undergoing a large scale construction site refurbishment and there on the edge of a pool was a colony of Southern Marsh Orchids growing among the waterside rushes and reeds.

He then said "we've got some more too, follow me to the Capybaras". A few minutes searching between the viewing rail and the safety fence had us looking at a gone over Bee Orchid and then a smaller one still in flower. Who needs to look at giant rodents when you've got these beauties right next to them!

With that it was time to leave for Base camp at the end of a very busty week and so ended #30DaysWild for us and the Zoo team - see their Facebook page Blackpool Zoo - Wildlife Learning for all they got up to. Looks like they had a blast being wild - just as e did. And just because the 'event' is over doesn't mean YOU have to stop being wild...please carry on doing random acts of wildness, finding bizarre, exotic, beautiful, ugly, rare and common species in your own outback and don't forget to share them!

Where to next? We've got a Year Bird Photo Challenge to catch up on this weekend, some of the other challengers are posting like mad and we don't want to get left behind!

In the meantime let us know how wild you're going to be in your outback this month.