Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris

The Safari has been doing some mothing over the Bank Holiday and has had some species new for Base Camp. We really liked this large and chunky Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing.

A Copper Underwing wasn't able to be identified to species. We couldn't get it to show its underwing and we didn't have the equipment to be able to knock it out for some manipulation.

A tiny little moth doing a handstand turned out  to be a Honesuckle Moth once we'd rummaged out the magnifying glass.

All moths are beautiful but some like this Willow Beauty are more beautiful than others to coin a phrase.

You never want to find too many of these in the depths of the trap lurking under the egg-boxes, thankfully this was the only one.

..it might be different at the weekend! Care required!!!

Far less malevolent are the Green Bottles Lucilia sp that came to gather the early morning rays as the sun poked over the top of the fence.

Our Extreme Photographer came round a couple of times and we spent some time with the cameras at Patch 1. The sun had brought out a great selection of invertebrates.
Common Darters spent time resting up surveying their domain for leafy vantage points.

We liked the way the light caught he wings and shows how they are shaped using the veins to provide the structure for their superb aerodynamics.

The plan was to find some butterflies but were soon side-tracked by other possibly more interesting stuff .

We've sort of got fed-upish of the standard portrait shots and spent some time trying to get something a little more different from different angles or lighting conditions or unusual settings/behaviours etc etc. Having the time to search out these objectives helps, soon we'll probably be back on birds and it'll be a case of point press and hope one or two shots are in focus.

There were loads of Common Meadow Grasshoppers about and  we got loads of shots of them in the grass but then we spied two together playing follow the leader, there were two more deeper in the vegetation and it's a shame we came across this little flurry of activity at the end of our session, had we more time we might have even treated you to some video to see what happened next.

 The bees were good value too

Butterflies did provide some lively entertainment in the warm sun and we spent a lot of energy chasing them around trying to get those slightly different to normal shots - hope you think we managed it.

A typical 'record' shot but there's no eyes!

 Another 'standard' shot but at least the eyes are visible and in focus in this one.

We have loads of pics of Common Blues on their food plant but this one on a Rose hip is a little out of the ordinary.

 Nice light making a Small Copper appear almost translucent.

A bit of tongue action on this one.

And the ubiquitous record wings open shot

 Underwing of a Speckled Wood sat on ripening Blackberries.

 This is how it's done, get down where the action is.

More art followed in the form of vegetation shots

A birthday trip to see some friends at the pub didn't give us too many photo opportunities unless you like lots of pics of  glasses of beer from full through half drunk to empty. we did see a Brimstone butterfly fluttering sown the lane near their home which we don't get round here (yet - although we are working on that one).

Our only pic was  trial pic of a flock of very distant Black Tailed Godwits out on a sandbank in the rapidly filling estuary.

So there you have a short break in a few pics, hope you enjoyed them.

No chance of a Patch 2 look this morning as we were dipping a couple of Green Sandpipers, just like we'd done last night! Patch 2 at lunchtime didn't give us anything of note.

Where to next? More mothing at the weekend but before then we're hoping some Patch 2 action.

In the meantime let us know what's providing diversionary interest in your outback.