Not so dull today

The Safari was out on Patch 2 as soon as it was light enough this morning, much better morning than the previous two there was even some sunshine on its way once the sun had risen above the eastern horizon. There was still a murky low mist over the sea making distant viewing impossible but at least there was a Grey Seal close in or at least as close in a the quite low low tide would allow.

The beach was busier today, dog walkers, fishermen and bait diggers contrived to ensure there was little wildlife.

With the sun rising the light was pretty good so we made some excuses to get the camera out and go down on the sands.

There's been something down there we've been itching to get some pics of for a while. But on the way we got distracted by a strap of Laminaria seaweed, not something we see too often on our beach. There were a couple of others lying around. We saw that it was covered in white stars.

It's the colonial Bryzoan Electra pilosa noted for its star shaped colonies.

The harsh low light gave us some arty opportunites

All this was distracting us from our mission which was to have a close look at a huge piece of driftwood that has been wedged up against the outfall pipe for a few months now.

Some days it is more covered than others and today was a more covered than not day. The sand to the right being of a very close consistency to quick sand and we very nearly lost a welly as well as being told we had mud all over our back and sleeve when we got back in the office, from trying to extricate said bot without falling over!

Other than Barnacles there didn't seem to be much colonising it.

Being so far out down the beach we got a view of the three piers across the misty beach being lit by the rising sun.

At lunchtime it was very mild and the tide was up. No blubber this time and not much else other than a Great Crested Grebe, just the one - where are they all? A near  fishing Red Throated Diver and a far flying one was best of the rest until an unidentified butterfly flew past us! That's a late one we thought and then a flippin bee came in-off and past our nose!!! It's the end of November, what's going on???

Also out were the Black Redstart's favourite flies, there were lots of them!

A gust of wind caught this one and blew it off its six feet, with the wall being wet it struggled to right itself

But did after a minute or two its wings looking a bit worse for wear.

All today's pics are off the phone, a bit more light might have been better for the macros they're a bit blurry from the darned thing not keeping still.

Where to next? It's the weekend and there's bound to be some wildlife involved some time somewhere.

In the meantime let us know who got stuck upside-down in your outback.