It's never a bad day when...

The Safari's  morning commute to work along the Prom had us practically drooling with anticipation. The sea was flat calm there was light hazy cloud but good light so no shadows – we were itching to get out on to the wall especially after a conversation last night with the folk from Liverpool Bay Marine Life Trust.

We were right to itch too. It only took us a matter of seconds to find a big bull Grey Seal close to the wall a little way to the south. Through the scope there was a bit of haze out on the horizon that we couldn’t see from the driving seat but it wasn’t that bad. While looking at the seal we say a large splash out on the horizon and then another with a dark shape. Focusing out there we soon got on a couple of Bottlenosed Dolphins half breaching in several feeding rolls – get in!  Can’t start the day better than that! Actually we did we found a third a little way away behind the others. Would have been better had they been a bit nearer but you can’t have everything.  After a few pretty good views they disappeared. There may have been more than three but that’s all we got at one time. Once they’d gone we went back to look at that nearby Grey Seal and found another four bobbing around behind him.  There weren’t many Common Terns from the dockland colony out fishing and we thought the dolphin feeding frenzy might have attracted the attention of the 10 or so Gannets that were cruising around.  Three Manx Shearwaters wheeled over the top of the dolphins, it’s not often we see them that far into the river mouth but they didn’t stick around.
A flock of nine Shelducks came past and made their way into the river, after they'd gone by it all went a bit quiet so we called it a day and headed back to the office for a celebratory cuppa.
Still it was only a few hours til lunchtime...which duly arrived but by now the tide was well out and the sea was somewhat disappointingly as dead as the proverbial Dodo so off we went round the work's garden in search of some #30DaysWild inspiration. There was an interloping school group on the back field - cheeky so-n-so's coming in to our garden from outside the borough without booking a session with Yours Truly, who do they think they are? Anyway they were having some fun and games in the sunshine before getting the bus back to school in the 'hinterlands'. A couple of the girls were making Daisy chains, something we don't see many kids do these days, in fact many kids don't know that Daisy is the name of the little white flowers with the yellow centres. They've all heard of them but wouldn't be able to point one out which is quite frightening and worrying! These two wee lasses did and made good use of the plethora of material available.

A little later an unexpected trip to the outside store had us walking past the wild garden where we spotted a Cinnabar moth flying around. We dashed back inside found a glass in which to catch it and went to get the camera aka phone.

It's wings are a bit wonky but it could fly alright.
#30DaysWild is all about interacting with nature so we gently put it on our finger and got a proper interacting with nature shot - aren't they stunners.

We wondered if it had not long emerged in the morning sun and perhaps had been disturbed before its wings had fully opening and stiffened.
A pretty good day but then any day with dolphins is a good day unless you're swimming with them in a captive environment like a hotel pool on your hols then it's very much not a good day - if you don't know why watch a film called The Cove to find out how they get to your hotel pool and never ever swim with them again.
Where to next? It's the weekend and we have a couple of local target species to aim for.
In the meantime let us know who's just too colourful for your outback