Rummaging around the foothills

The Safari has been on the trail of some early summer migrant birds. For the most part we've been traipsing up n down the prom on the search for Wheatears. For the most part we've been thwarted by poor weather conditions though. One grotty, grey morning we saw a small group of Common Scoters sat on the sea not far beyond the low water mark. That's at least half a mile from the seawall but easily the nearest we'd seen this species this year, normally they are just black dots out on the horizon. T'mutt was hastily returned to Base Camp and swapped for the camera, luckily the flock hadn't flown off. Not the best pic but still #122 for our Challenge.

 

Despite the weather not improving we continued our promenade Wheatear quest failing to find any but did bump into the local male Kestrel hovering almost at eye level along thr cliffs. We usually see him in great conditions when we don't have the camera, or if we do the wind is in the wrong direction and we don't bother to take 'bum shots'. Today the wind was right but the light was pants and he was a little more distant than we would have liked.

A couple of unsuccessful Wheatear days later we had a wander to Marton Mere to join the volunteers, something we've been meaning to do for some time. We walked in from the north east passing a veritable plethora of Chiffchaffs, they were singing everywhere, and some were even showing themselves!

Also singing were a few Cetti's Warblers, Wrens and a couple of Robins, from deep in the scrub one of the small local population of  Bullfinches called.

We arrived at the worksite a little before the volunteers so sat on the nearby bench soaking up the spring atmosphere . We were joined by old mate AL and just as he sat down a Jay all to briefly landed in the bushes in front of us, far too quick for us to raise the camera, we've got a sneaking feeling that Jay is going to be this years Challenge bogey bird!
The volunteers arrived and we got stuck in to some dead hedging for a couple of hours. That's us at the back wandering around aimlessly. The deadhedging is made from cut back Bramble and other sgrub trimmings to help keep mostly dogs but also unleashed people out of the scrub areas during the nesting season.

We couldn't stay more than a couple of hours, it was a very pleasant spring day and t'mutt was beginning to get a bit hot so even if we had been able to continue working a longer we'd have had to have stopped to take him back to Base Camp sooner rather than later anyway. The walk back to the car gave us a couple of opportunities to try to get a pic of a Cetti's Warbler, but they were either too obscured in the vegetation or posing very nicely for the briefest of seconds and flitting off, like the Jay, far too quickly for us to raise the camera. We did another pic of a Chiffchaff though. #123 and March target of six new species reached, better still four of those weren't on our target list but 'bonus birds' if you will.

Another bird that wasn't on our radar for March, and one we didn't see at all last year never mind photograph, was a Green Sandpiper that dedicated local patch worker TS had found on a flooded field which was on our route back from the Mere so we stopped for a quick look but had no joy. We decided that if it was reported the following day we'd try again after getting some more detailed info about its exact whereabouts.We did go back the next day and had a look from where we'd unsuccessfully looked from the previous day and Bingo there it was and like most scarcer birds seem to be it was the furthest bird from us by far. A good addition to the tally, #124, and a big thank you to TS for finding a local one, putting the news out and the extra info.

And so onto the continuing saga of no Wheatears...we took the camera on every dog walk with half decent weather to no avail. And then a grotty no camera morning there was what we were looking for stood on the seawall not five yards in front of us - could we get a phone pic...no chance! And then before we'd got half way down our usual dog walking route we found another that soon disappeared when another dog walker came the other way. Just our luck it was a grim camera-free morning. Drat, drat and double drat. 

The next day the weather was morev conducive to carting a heavy camera round and much less  likely to get it water damaged, but there wasn't a sniff of a Wheatear to be had, We console ourself with taking some snaps of the passing Herring Gulls.

Further Wheatear meanders with t'mutt continued to prove fruitless, just as well really as they were mostly camera-less too.

Friday came around, and that's the week's day out  on safari with CR and IH. We had hoped to go up to south Cumbria but the weather had other plans for us so we stayed relatively local and had a day out on the foothills of Bowland, meeting IH at Beacon Fell's Visitor Centre. There was addition exctiement here as the North West Stages rally was being set up for the weekend. Here's a bit of what they got upto on the lanes we'd be driving later in the day. There going nearly as fast as we do if we've had news of a good bird in the area.

Once IH had arrived we had a look at the feeders at the visitor centre and they didn't disappoint. It's a bit of a shame you have to view them from inside the VC and there's a net acrosss the window to stop the birds trying to fly through the VC and hurting themselves crashing into the glass but you are up close and personal to the action just a few short feet away. The usual feeder suspects are there, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, Chaffinches with the added excitement of lots of Siskins, a odd Nuthatch and the stars of the show, the speedy Bank Voles.

A walk through the forest to the Trig Point at the top and then down around the back produced very little, just a smattering of Coal Tits, Siskins and Robins, the strongcold wind not helping at all. So it was onward to our next port of call, Brock Bottoms - there's an ointment for that in the first aid kit in the car!

Here there wasn't as much water in the river as we feared which was good but at the car park a fair portion of the riverbank had been cordoned off where a flood had washed away several trees and taken away a good few yards of riverbank with them. The flood hadn't seemded to have changed the island in the stream there and Butterbur flowers were beginning to show through the shingle.

Walking down towards the first proper bend in the river, Dipper Corner, we came across a goodly patch of Wood Anemones, an indicator of Ancient Woodland.

We did see a Dipper at Dipper Corner but the bankside vegatation makes it difficult to get pics from there and at this time of day you're looking straight down the barrel of the light reflection off the water. So we hoped we'd see some more further on. We've already had Dipper for our Challenge but it's always good to get an improved pic which we hoped to do. The bird we really 'needed' was a Grey Wagtail having seen only one so far this year and that, weirdly, was in the garden at Base Camp during the Big Garden Bird Count. It wasn't long before IH saw some movement in a large fallen tree straddling the river, a pair of displaying Grey Wagtails. Nice but tricky to get anything like a decent shot of. #125

Continuing our walk through the fairly quiet riverside woods past the archaeolgical remains of the old mill workers' cottages we did finally meet up with another Dipper.

Great to listen to it singing too.

There were more Grey Wagtails here too.

We stayed a while trying to improve our pics of both species, having much more luck with the Dipper.

Wouldja look at those nictitating membranes, they protect it's eyes when foraging underwater.

And a typical 'on a rock' pose

And the other way round

We carried on downstream towards the old mill renewing our aquaintance with an old friend, the smallest plant with the biggest name - Opposite Leaved Golden Saxifrage.

Believe it or not there is an Alternate Leaved Golden Saxifrage, and it occurs at this site but we've never been able to find it here - or anywhere else for that matter. It's a much scarcer and less widespread plant. The nectar in the tiny flowers of our 'OLGS' was being enjoyed by a few Drone Flies, Eristalis pertinax.

Beside them on a patch of emerging Wild Garlic was a shiny blue beetle, possible an Alder Beetle off the adjacent bankside Alder trees.

In the afternoon sunshine and down in the steep valley sheltered from the cold wind we had hoped for our first butterfly of the year but these were just about all the invertebrates we came across. 

We went as far as the old mill before heading back to the cars and lunch. Passsing the same Grey Wagtail and Dipper on the way but with butties beckoning we didn't hang around too long.

While eating lunch we watched the feeders in the car park but they didn't give any photo opportunities. A procession of rally cars went past presumably reccying the route for pace notes for the event tomorrow, while a cheeky Spaniel appeared and began to hassle IH for some titbits, good job it didn't come to us - we're to mean to give t'mutt owt to eat away from his mealtimes.

Two sites were in the offing after lunch, Lydiate Lane or Grizedale (correctly with a Z this time) we opted for the latter as the former would have been just a smaller version of what we had just done and the latter held the prospect of finding some scaly things.

We drove more rally lanes to get to the parking area for Grizedale where we found safety tape on the tight bend warning any potential spectators not to stand there. No standing around for us we were off down the hill towards the river. It was fairly warm and still sheltered as we came up to the Slow Worm site. Unfortuantely turning over several of the rocks they like to hide under didn't produce any, perhaps they weren't out of hibernation yet. We've not been here for a couple of years and it was a shock to see the damage that mountain bikers had done in the big gully there, churned up tracks all over the place, trees cut down and obviously lots of disturbance to a formerly quiet area.

Working our way carefully down the steep valley side back to the main path we saw a Buzzard overhead, just about the first bird of the afternoon. Down in the woods all was deadly quiet, the most exciting thing we found was this rather large Scarlet Elf Cup fungus.

The reservoir dam didn't have any Common Sandpipers working theirv way along its edge, still a week too early we guess but IH did hear a Green Woodpecker yaffle in the distance, a good tick for here and good to know they're still around it's a good few years since we've seen or even heard one here. The res itself was devoid of life, no Goosanders - not even a Mallard. We should have taken a photo of the absolute butcvhery someone with a tractor mounted flail someone had done to the pathside shrubs and trees - horrific, it was really bad and whoever did it shouldn't have been allowed out with anything more than a pair of secateurs!

Back at Base Camp we've been continuing our unsuccessful quest to photograph a Wheatear, it's hard to photograph the invisible. We did see a promenade mega rarity this morning though, a Wren was hopping around the seawall, never seen one here before in several years of wandering up and down Chat Alley and beyond.

We've got another rant coming but we'll leave that til next time.

Where to next? Yet more grotty weather is forecast so it;ll probaly be more tales of unsuccessful Wheatear hunting and maybe another visit to the Mere volunteers...weather permitting!

 

In the meantime let us know who's been dipping in and out of the water in your outback.

 

A fine finish at Leighton Moss

The Safari and CR headed up the motorway to leighton Moss again after deciding there was probably going to be more of interest there than at Martin Mere WWT, the lure of the possiblility of Bearded Tits, Red Deer, Otters, Bitterns and a Ring Necked Duck was greater than the possiblility of water levels being too high and still not fully out of eclipse waterfowl. 

On arrival our first destination was the grit trays along the path to the Grizedale Hide. As ever there was aposse of birders standing there, obviously waiting as no bins nor cameras were raised in the direction of the reedbed. "You should have been here ten minutes ago" was the answer to our inevitable question "Have they been showing?" With no sounds of 'pinging' coming from the reedbed we walked staright on to the hide. The sun was out and the glare was bad to our right, which unfortunately is exactly where all the birds were. And there weren't that many of them, just a few Teal, Shoveler and Pintail. We tried to get an arty silhoutte shot of a Pintail without quite nailing the effect we wanted.

The area of cut reeds to our left was perfectly illuminated in lovely autumn morning sunshine but there wasn't a bird to be seen! All our options now exhausted we didn't hang around too long and soon walked back along the trail past the grit trays to the shaking of heads - still no sign. We took the left hand turn to Tim Jackson Hide where again there was preecious little on view, a couple of Mute Swans with a few Mallards and Gadwall and all distant, we only gave it a few minutes before retracing our steps to the main path. At the junction there is a fallen log covered in mosses and ferns.

A reminder that we are in an/the area of Atlantic Temperate Rainforest where trees and shrubs with any age to them should be bedecked with ferns, mosses, liverworts and other epiphytes.

Out of the shade and into the sunshine the temperature soared and minutes after CR remarked dragonflies should be emerging this male Common Darter flew across the path and landed a few feet  in front of  us.

With the current weather forecasts showing no sign of any frost they'll be still on the wing at Christmas! It was just after we'd had our fill of the dragonfly and had walked on a bit that we heard the distinctive pinging of the Bearded Tits coming from deep in the reeds to our left. Obviously we didn't know it at the time but this was the nearest we were going to get to them today. 

Approaching Lillians Hide we saw a couple staring intently at the tops of the Alder trees right outside the door..."A few Siskins and some Goldfinches" the informed us as we walked up. Holding the camera anything like still while pointing it just about vertically was a challenge - we really do need or (or better) muscles! But we did have some success although they weren't for posing properly.

We got a couple of better ones too which brought up our target of 175 species of bird photographed this year for our International Bird Photo Challenge...Job done and still a handful more to get if the gods allow.

From the hide we had some great views of a male Marsh Harrier which came at lot closer than they usually do for us.

The best (and closest) bird on the lake was this Black Headed Gull, all the waterfowl being fairly distant today.

We found the female Ring Necked Duck for the others in the hide, several of whome didn't realise it was here. It was too far away to warrant pointing the camera though as we'd seen (possibly) the same bird and got photos here last March. While we watched for more harrier action or maybe a passing Otter some of the waterflowl ventured a little closer.

It was now getting towards butty time so we moved on aiming for the Causeway Hide to have our lunch. We were interupted in our journey by these fungi along the boardwalk. We're useless at fungi so can't tell you what they are.

Interestingly today the Cetti's Warblers were noticable by their silence, we expected them to be quite vocal in the sunshine as they had been the previous week. Of course we stopped at the grit trays but word on the street was there had been no sight nor sound of the Bearded Tits since early morning. While we chatted this Coal Tit appeared and flew down to the ground picking tiny morsels up.

We had a look on the floor but couldn't see anything that might be of interest to a Coal Tit, perhaps some naughty person had left some food - which is against the site rules now - and it had all been eaten. While watching the Coal Tit we were sure we could hear Whooper Swans close by and turning round we just caught a flock dispeearing behind the treetops. 

Now our butties were getting heavy in our bags so off to the hide it was for a good old chomp. Along the wat the Causeway ahead of us looked spectacular.

Looking through the screen beside the hide door before we entered there was a Heron having a good old preen.

Once sat down on a bench in the hide our gags were ransacked and butties eagerly devoured. Just like last week a paitr of Migrant Hawker dragonflies flew past in tandem. Out on the water 'sound of the day' was provided by the quiet conversational honks of the Whooper Swans, it's a really peaceful and soothing sound. In all we counted eight Whooper Swans, not bad for here as we've rarely seen them grace this reserve in all the years we've been coming here.

There was plenty to see here with lots of the waterfowl taking time out to have a wash and brush up like this female Gadwall.

And this Coot.

Butties munched and waterfowl enjoyed it was time to hit the trail again, this time continuing on to Lower Hide. 

The rule against putting food out at various points along the way has made the woodland walk a lot quieter, gone are the Robins that mugged you for seed and gone are the fleeting smash n grab raids of the Marsh Tits. We understand the fear of Avian Flu getting a hold and of the birds becoming dependent on hand outs even though there's an abundance of natural food but it does seem the up close and personal interactions with the wildlife have suffered for it.

Anyways at the hide we heard a couple of Cetti's Warblers at last, something had to break the silence. From the hide there were a few  Mallards and Teal roosting up close by but again it was a case of you should have been here ten minutes ago as the Otters (plural!) had been showing. Nothing for it but to sit and wait.

A juvenile Moorhen pottered about

And away in the distance a Marsh Harrier appeared flew over the far reedbed then circled and came in to land on a waterside tussock.

Where it sat for ages.

If it was the same one as last week it didn't follow the Otter that appeared briefly in an attempt at Osprey-like fishing.

The Otter didn't show well nor did it show for long it soon disappeared back in to the reeds...ah well more waiting...
In the meantime we watched the Moorhen coninue its potterings

and when something unseen flushed all the roosting ducks we saw there were far more Teal than we'd first imagined.

Away to our left one of the swans identified itself as a Whooper Swan, surely not one from earlier??? If so its swum a fair distance pretty quickly, and then three of the others were also Whoopers...these four must be another four, different to the earlier eight, mustn't they??? And still the Marsh Harrier sat on his tussock. Our excitement hit a new high when a Heron appeared from nowhere - we assume it had been standing out of sight behind the tree at the end of the cut patch of reeds.

Time passed and we were just about to give up and go and have a look elsewhere when an Otter appeared, then there was a commotion, was it fishing? No, it was fighting a second one, two well grown cubs having a playful rough n tumble.

Wow, just wow - absolutely fabulous, although as a photographer you always want them closer! But as quickly as they appeared so the departed - exit stage right and with their disappearance we disappeared too, heading back from whence we'd come.

Still no Robins or Marsh Tits through the woods and again no Jays in the 'Jay field' to the left. Back along the Causeway we didn't go in the hide but a quick look from the screen gave us a count of 12 Whooper Swans - the four we'd seen from Lower Hide now having met up with the others. At the grit trays there was no action, nor had there been all afternoon, a birder saying she'd been stood there for an hour and a half waiting for a glimpse of a Bearded Tit, as she had at the Grizedale grit trays too. We left her to it and continued back to Lillians Hide. There were no Siskins in the Alders above the Dipping Pond and none in the trees by the hide, just kalf a dozen or so Goldfinches here now. From the hide we were relieved to see the Ring Necked Duck was now one of the nearest birds to us.

A couple of Grey Wagtails tazzed about around the piles of cut reed below us adding some colour to the proceedings.

And then we had another Marsh Harrier

Pintail gave us good views like earlier too, they're such a handsome duck.

And one with a fully grown tail

Four Goldeneyes, diving in between the numerous Tufted Ducks, were our first of the season

A Great White Egret flew in and landed close to another Heron which wasn't amused so chased it off but further away.

We usually do an Egrets v Herons tally while out on safari and these days Herons are usually soundly beaten, but not today. 

Time to head back to try our luck at the Grizedale grit trays again...a much smaller posse of waiting birders this time and the same shaking of heads as we walked up, no sign all afternoon so on we went. From the hide the light was a bit better than this morning and the birds a little more spread out but still mostly over to the right. We 'made do' with a preening Mallard on a pile of cut reed right outside the window.

Another Great White Egret appeared and landed in the same place as one that caught a small Pike a couple of weeks ago so we were hopeful of a repeat performance.

It strode around looking very regal but had a stab at nothing, for a while it resorted to the leg jiggling egrets do to disturb prey hidden in the mud between their toes but that didn't seem to work either. We were concentrating very hard on the egret willing to to make a catch when a voice behind us said "Lads, there's deer to your right"...and he wasn't wrong! Three Red Deer hinds had emerged from the reedbed to graze on the fresh recently cut patch.

They munched away for several minutes until the middle one heard something behind it in the reeds
Whatever it was wasn't there so they went back to grazing, after a while this hind must have heard something else as she twited one ear round for a closer listen but obviously not quite as intently as before.

Then there he was, she could hear the big stag coming.

What a magnificent beast and amazing that he could make his way through the reedbed without seeming to disturb the reeds with his huge set of antlers, we've seen tiny Bearded Tits make the reeds shake more than he did. The sun came out and we had a photo bean feast!

 

 Wouldya look at that! What an animal!

And then they were gone - simply melted back into the reedbed. What a fantastic animal to have (almost) on our doorstep.

We thought they might reappear in a few minutes under the old tree on the bund between the two pools - and they did

And then they were gone, melting quietly into the reeds again.

Our attention returned to the Great White Egret, sorry bird but you were totally out-gunned for a while there. It was still fishing without success.

When it fiannly gave up and left to try a different, hopefully better, patch we left too.

Our plan was to nip back to the Tim Jackson Hide to see if the deer had made their way over there as that was where they looked like they were heading. There was more shaking of the heads as we passed the grit trays, no Bearded Tit pics for us this safari, and none for anyone else it would seem today. At the hide we asked if the deer had arrived but again there was an all round shaking of heads. We gave them ten minutes to turn up but sadly they were a no-show and with the light fading that was our cue to head back to Base Camp.

A bit of a slow start to the safari but what a mammal-tastic finish; who could ask for more.

Where to next? The Safari could be bothered by inclement weather this coming week and then a family reunion so it might be a little while before we're out n about again - watch this space as you never know.

In the meantime let us know who's looking all magestic in your outback.