The ton is up

The Safari left you on a cliffhanger at the end of our last blog, would we or wouldn't we get 100 species of birds photographed by the end of January. Well it's now the end of the first week of February and we're on 103 but have been plagued by two weeks of seriously grotty weather...did we or didn't we...read on...

Desperate for a safari away from our usual haunts with some better shelter we had Pennington Flash near Wigan suggested to us. Now we've not been there since 2019 mostly due to the fear of getting caught in humungous motorway traffic jams on the way back to Base Camp at the end of the day. These road works have been going on for years now and we have been stuck in them on non-safari days, once for five hours! So you can understand our reluctance to venturte that way...But after umming and ahhing at IH's suggestion we plugged the post code into the sat nav and knock us down with a feather it suggested an alternative route we could have been using in all those intervening years...dohhhhh. We picked up CR without further ado and followed the sat nav's very easy route to our destination with IH turning up from the Southside a few minutes later.

A bitterly cold strong wind was blowing across the lake but we headed for the shelter of the wooded areas passing a well watched Siskin in a bankside Alder tree.

The Feeding Station was awash with Grey Squirrels, at least a dozen of them. There was plenty of food for the birds but with that many squirrels gorging themselves on it it wasn't going to last very long...and there was a similar number of Mallards enticed off the adjecent pond by the copius free handout too. The smaller birds flitted in and out as best they could when the opportunites arose.

But there was no sign of the one we really wanted to see, the local Willow Tits. After a very enjoyable lengthy watch we moved on down an extremely muddy track to the next hide passing another small feeding station of four small bird tables secreted in the edge of the scrub. This was very active with Blue, Great and Coal Tits but still no Willow Tits. The hide overlooks a fairly large pool with an island in the middle much favoured by the local Goosanders.

Everything else on the pool was tucked up in the margins on the far side Tufted Ducks, a couple of Pochards, Little Grebes, Teal, a few Shoveler and Mallard, a nice selection of waterfowl. A Wren acted like a mouse along the side of the ditch below the hide window diappearing under the thick layer of fallen grass in the hunt for whatever invertebrates it could find but no Kingfishers were perched on the ditchside twigs nor flew along it. Continuing our circuit the wooded areas were indeed pleasantly sheltered but sadly lacking in birdlife. The next hide was good though with eight Herons stood on the bankwith one Little Egret, it's not often you see more herons than egrets these days. Then a flash of blue shot by followed by a second and this one perched in a nearby tree but well hidden by intervening twigs and branches requiring that scariest of photographic techniques - manual focus!

Not the best but Kingfisher became bird #94, Little Grebe at the previous hide would have been had it not been so far away as to only about three pixels in the frame. By now it was lunch time so back to our vehicles to collect the butties/pies etc. Lunch was devoured at the small hide we'd not visited on the morning lap. It overlooks a different part of the pool we saw the Kingfisher and probaly one of the same two from early appeared in a slightly more open position in a nearby bush.

From there it was round to the Feeding Station again, crossing our fingers that Willow Tit would turn up. None did although there were plenty of Reed Buntings to keep us entertained

It was soon time to have another look at those small bird tables. The usual suspects were still there.

And then...BINGO...a Willow Tit appeared...#95

Followed soon after by a Great Spotted Woodpecker annoyingly keeping round the back of the tree at first

Before showing itself in all its glory...#96

Discression is the better part of valour so it is said and this time we left the little feeding station by the way we came instead of traipsing through the thick mud again. This time the 'Goosander Island' Hide came up trumps with the Little Grebes now more active and had moved a lot closer although still a bit distant for 'proper' shots.

Leaving the Goosanders to their island

we moved on passing a tiny pool, not much more tha na puddle really which was well illuminated by the afternoon sun. "It would be good if a Kingfisher was sitting on those well lit branches" said CR not realising a few feet away in the gloomy side of the pool there was one!

We edged forwards as stealthily as possible

The pics would have been so much better had the bird been sat 20 feet to the left. We managed to get a couple of passers-by on to it too which was good. Continuing on in to the sheltrered wooded area either CR or IH spotted a Siskin high in the tops of the trees but we couldn't find it and before we'd finished searching one of them had spotted a Goldcrest low in the trees on the opposite side of the track. This was in the better light...at times!

A nice bonus for #98 as we'd missed one up Beacon Fell a couple of days earlier.

We had another look from the hide where we first saw the Kingfisher and this time watched a female Bullfinch acrobatically stripping buds from a Hawthorn tree close to where the Kingfisher had been sat erlier.

As time was now pressing and it was getting gloomier by the minute there was just enough time for a last look at the little bird tables. We did see another Willow Tit but it was in and out too fast for us.

And then like this Nuthatch it was time for us to leave.

Another great safari in the bag, loads seen and another few added to the Challenge tally; now standing at 98 with five days left, surely we can get the last two in that time...but the weather had other ideas and poor conditions kept us stuck at Base Camp although we did bump into another Snow Bunting while walking the dog yes you've guessed it - no camera! It wasn't until the penultimate day of  the year we were able to get out for an impromptu safari picking up CR on the way to Middleton up north. The sun was shining and we had the morning ahead of us. Arriving on site CR said he could see our target even before we'd drawn the car to a stop...Glossy Ibis - not a bad 'from the car' tick. After getting out of said car we couldn't see it for a while - we were looking too far away and the bird was hidden behind a fence rail. But then there it was in all its multi-coloured finery shimmering the sunshine.

What a beauty for #99 but could we get the ton up today? With a bit of  time to spare we had a look at the nearby Heysham nature reserve and Red Rocks while giving the pooch a bit of a run at the same time. It was deadly quite apart from a singing Chaffinch, the first we've heard this year. We were hoping for something like a Jackdaw or maybe the Brent Geese on the rocks but the tide was out there and there were very few birds within any sort of range. Maybe we should havev gone round to Half  Moon Bay but unfortunately we didn't have enough time and had to high tail it back to Base Camp with the tally stuck on 99 with one day to go. That evening we saw two Snow Buntings fly into the remnant dunes on the prom in the very last of the daylight, we tried to get a phone pic of one of them but it flitted off to somewhere unseen before we'd got the phone out of our pocket...One day to get one species - we had a plan!

The 31st was an average grey sort of a January day without much wind thankfully. We loaded up the camera, dog, and half a loaf of bread and headed to the shopper's car park in the nearby village of Poulton-le-Fylde. St Chad's church is a well known Jackdaw haunt. We did see some on a roof top not far from Base Camp while en route but the pics weren't great, it's a bit awkward pointing a long lens towards bedroom windows while sttod beside a busy road.

We'd got our ton, happy days, but could do with a better pic so we carried on to Poulton where the Jackdaws were indeed in the churchyard and showing much better than the roadside ones earlier.

One of them even got to sample the bait we'd brought just in case...

Mission accomplished 100 species of birds photographed during January and with about 6 hours of daylight to spare - Result!!!

And then reality hit home. All that hard work will mean progreesing with our Challenge during February and into March isn't going to be easy, we've sort of shot ourselves in the foot a bit. Well we've got to give the other challengers time to catch up before the summer visitors arrive in the spring.

Target for February will be 15 and only 5 more for March...how will we fare?

 

Where to next? Another safari northwards beckons.  

In the meantime let us know who's got the taste for bread in your outback.