Friday 11 March 2011

It goes in the book – yes!



The Safari says the pic has nothing to do with today's post - it's just a reminder for anyone local to get out and about looking for any amphibians this weekend.
We were out as usual on Patch 1 battling a stiff cold breeze which was keeping everything quiet. Everything that is apart from our freshly re-found Song Thrush in the Golden Triangle or Song Thrush with the freshly re-found voice.
The park was almost silent except for a couple of Wrens and Woodpigeons, Woodpigeon Wood only had four Woodpigeons sleeping in late with one of the Carrion Crows, the Magpies had all left for wherever it is they go during the day.
No Peregrines were seen on their ledge but driving to work a little later one was up there sunning itself, or at least keeping out of the wind on the leeside.
The beach at Patch 2 was over-run with hominids, bait digging, fishing and mutt walking consequently all the birds were fairly distant today. 109 Redshanks was a good count, roughly half beneath our feet on the other side of the wall and half away down on the tide line. 124 Oystercatchers just pipped them. A couple of hundred gulls were within grilling range but yesterday’s Caspian Gull (123, P2:41) wasn’t with them...yes, we had brought the big camera out...’nuff said!
Most of the action was over our southern border with several hundred more Oystercatchers and several thousand more gulls, our mega might well have been down there being belligerent around the best pickings of the shellfish wreck dumped on the beach by yesterday’s bad weather.... probably arguing with all those Glaucous Gulls What we really need is the office to be moved to the sand dunes and be allowed about three hours for lunch or better still three hours for lunch AND three hours gull-time a day...not much to ask seeing as how they now want to charge us for our free car parking at work = yet another 1% pay cut!
We didn’t look out to sea and we didn’t get a lunchtime safari in either. Still two lifers in as many weeks isn’t to be sniffed at these days, the drought is ended and if we hadn’t dipped so many when we were a full blown twitcher we’d be over 350 for our (geographic) British Isles list by now. Hopefully we’ll creep a little nearer that milestone later this year (doesn’t include the Channel Isles – biogeographically they are in France, or Rockall, but does include St Kilda, not that we’ve ever been to any of those places). Having said that Caspian Gull didn’t ‘exist’ when we were regularly going twitching all those years ago.
Where to next? Wifey has a shopping trip planned to the next town and the Safari is going to tag along with Frank and be dropped off to do some birding, maybe get another year bird or two.
In the meantime let us know what’s camera shy in your outback.

4 comments:

Stuart Price said...

I wouldn't know a Caspian Gull if it perched on the roof of my car!

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

With the jizz of this thing you'd certainly wonder what was stood on the roof of your car Stu, stuck out like a sore thumb...then the field guide would be out and you'd get the ID.

Cheers

Davo

Amila Kanchana said...

Thanks for link,very interesting blog about amphibians it is. That's s salamander in the pic? BTW,I've posted an interesting amphibian on my blog,check it out.

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Hi Amila - the animal is a Smooth Newt, similar but not closely related to salamanders which we don't have in the UK but several species are found in mainland Europe.

Cheers

Dave