Success - sort of

The Safari got the velocipede out of the garage this morning and with a slight change of tactic going up the hill, a bit of a killer when you haven't warmed up, and on the downside too, we beat the 20 minute target well the stopwatch said 20:27 but we did have to wait for a few cars leaving our street and then about 30 cars at the roundabout; well over 27 seconds worth of waiting.

Patch 2 was poor, hardly anything moving, even the half dozen or so Gannets were becalmed and sat on the sea. There was a huge amount of litter floating around out there, everywhere we looked there was litter floating around at all ranges from near to far. Checking the Fylde Bird Club sightings it looks as though we should have got there earlier.

A busy morning in a hot office followed but at lunchtime we had another look at the still dead Patch 2 but then had a short walk on the breezy beach.

We had a peek in the 'rockpools' and saw the little Blenny an instant before he saw us and vanished down his hidey-hole. Lots of crabs too.

Beadlet Anemone on Sea Lettuce

'sleeping' Elegant Anemone in Honeycomb Worm 'reef'

Close up

An open one - can't wait for the new waterproof mobile phones...the possibilities are going to be endless :-)

Sadly there was far to much of this on the beach, this little lot was almost definitely washed in on the top of the tide ather than being placed there by litter louts

The 'core' area of the beach gets mechanically and hand cleaned everyday when the tide allows and this week over a ton of rubbish a day is being collected...that's over a ton too much as they don't get it all and the tide takes a fair proportion out to sea as we'd seen earlier.

In all the excitement of last week we missed an important event...the launch of the new Maroo Wildlife Refuge website, there's a good rogues gallery! We'd recommend any budding vets or vet nurses, wildlife refuge staff out there would do well to get Down Under to Maroo and have a good session there - a great experience.

Where to next? Somewhat unbelievably we've been invited to sit as an 'expert' on a panel of proper experts at a Whale and Dolphin event at Liverpool Museum in advance of the National Whale and Dolphin Watch which starts next weekend.

In the meantime please tell us the filthy litter louts haven't visited your outback

Late edit - added to the nestimg in the garden list a Robin see taking a big beakful of food into the Wisteria :)