Wednesday 5 May 2010

A late result

The safari had the usual Patch 1 visit this morning. The/a Chiffchaff has returned from wherever. Blackcaps were heard in the usual places and a third was present in the far corner. No other news and no Patch 2 visit this morning either - no point visibility was down to about 500 feet in a thick sea mist murk.
No lunchtime visit either, too busy...but it wouldn't have been any use, still extremely murky.
Later we had a trip to check out the drying newt pond - yes it's as dry as a bone and the newts are gone. But all is not lost as we had a through search for eggs and only found one probable folded leaf. There wasn't much in the way of suitable plant species. Perhaps the newts knew what was going to happen and moved on before the inevitable happened. It has been a very dry April here, it's barely raine at all all month...so much for April showers.
We checked a couple of other ponds without success, one was on the verge of drying up the other had plenty of water but few suitable Great Crested Newt egg laying plants.
In the corner of the pond under the overhanging trees lurked a recently fledged Heron trying its luck at fishing.
It froze as we moved around the pond checking the plant leaves. Even ignoring us a we approached within a couple of yards, so close it over filled the frame on full zoom.


Where to next? More Patch stuff - murk permitting.
In the meantime let us know what didn't realise you might be dangerous in your outback today

1 comment:

Monika said...

The second to last heron shot is my fave!