We'll glossy over that one!

The Safari met up with JG at the private reserve in south Cumbria last week and had a great day which started somewhat umpromisingly with some heavy drizzle. We set off along the trail passing the 'Adder' wall' but no Adders today , the rain keeping them well down in their burrows, a nice male Redstart which did a little bit of singing described by J as 'like a wonky Chaffinch' and when it sang again we could hear why she would think that...great description!

The ditch was disappointingly devoid of any insects, or anything else for that matter and apart from a family of Tree Pipits the moss area was quiet too.

At the bridge there were no Beautiful Demoiselles to be seen and the trail became 'interesting' to say the least

If we weren't on the raised boardwalk that vegetation would look even taller! We completed the curcuit of the second moss area again seeing not a lot but at least the rain had stopped and it was trying to brighten up.

Back at 'Adder wall' there were still no Adders but on a dead stump a little further back J spotted athis pair of 4-Banded Longhorn Beetles.

A sleepy Comma was nearby showing its underwing and how it came by its name.

We'd also managed to get a half decent pic of some Sundew which we failed to do on our previous visit, better still it's in flower now.

By now it was getting towards lunchtime so we headed back to the butties and took up position on the visitor centre's patio overlooking the reserve and in particular the Osprey's nest. We'd only just gone through the gate when we noticed a stick in the middle of the path that wasn't there earlier...and then it moved - "Stop" we shouted to J, it was our first Grass Snake of the day but had seen us coming and was speeding towards cover

During our lunch break we enjoyed a small herd of four Red Deer grazing the woodland edge below us and watched the antics of the Ospreys, they have a chick and it looked like a male was bringing in a fish - how we missed a getting a pic of him carrying his 'torpedo' we don't know but we did. But it seems like this male was from a different nest as it was seen off by the resident birds and disappeared into the woods on the far side of the valley.

Ravens cronked and a Sparrowhawk soared but Buzzards were notably absent and that meant there was no sign of the local Honey Buzzards either.

The weather was brightening up nicely now so we had another look for the Adders - again without success but we did find a Grass Snake very much hidden from view in the long grass beyond the wall that gave just about the worst views of Grass Snake, or even any snake anywhere in the world, we've ever had so with the sun coming out we decided to go and have a look at the pond. it maybe wasn't quite as lively as we'd hoped but there was plenty to keep us occupied like these Black-and-Yellow Longhorn Beetles.

Most of the blue damselflies we could see closely enough to identify turned out to be Azure Damselflies and there were still a good number of Large Red Damselflies on the wing. Last time out the Common Darters hadn't emerged but today there were several patrolling the pond and basking around its edges when the sun broke through.

A Golden Ringed Dragonfly kept doing circuits of the wooded island in the middle of the pond and eventually sat up on a reed

There were also at least a couple of Black Darters over the water (and we'd seen one earlier on the moss) and we saw another dragonfly briefly that we're fairly certain was a Downy Emerald but it disappeared round the back of the island and we never saw it again.

Having spent an hour at the pond we headed back towards the visitor centre for yet another look for the Adders. We passed a basking Small Tortoiseshell but there were no Grass Snakes out on this stretch of wall

It flew off and went over the gate beating us to the Adder zone where it sat up on a leaf for another bask, shame the Adders didn't feel like basking out in the open too!

We took another wander across the moss where by now there were Common Lizards aplenty getting their share of the sunshine and soaking up warmth absorbed by the dark timbers of the boardwalk.

Another visiting naturalist told us he'd seen several Adders earlier - that would have been while we were having lunch probably) but by now there were very warm and very active so much less likely to be spotted.

With time no longer on our side we headed back towards the visitor centre when J called out "snake", she'd disturbed on the wall by the warden's house. It had disappeared into a gap in the stonework so we sat on the low garden wall opposite and waited. Sure enough after a few minutes a little face appeared.

We were able to cautiously move round to get a bit better light on it from a better angle and a little bit closer too.

And that ended our visit - or so we thought. As J rounded the corner to the car park she called "snake" again! Another Grass Snake. It saw us and tried to sneak off and that was when we realised it was going nowhere and stretching itself out so much and was actually stuck fast in the crack in the path.

Without further ado we gently teased it to the right where the crack was a little wider and after a couple of minutes it was free and shot off to the left and the dark corner it was trying to reach when we rudely sprang out upon it. We suppose we could have lifted it up once it was free and got the 'selfie' but with all the struggling and hissing it had been doing it was obviously very stressed and probably would have played and  'stunk' us and that's not what we wanted two minutes before getting in the car so we left it find somewhere dark and quiet to chill out.

Yet another great day at this great reserve, can't wait to get back there.

A warm evening found us walking on the beach with Wifey and Monty when we spotted several jellyfish. Looking around we came across a couple of Blue Jellyfish, a species we've not seen before despite many years of regular beachcombing all along this coast. It can give a sting like a bag full of  Nettles but you can't deny it's a beautiful thing.

There were several Lion's Mane Jellyfish too, now they will make you go OWWW if they sting you, apparently it can be very painful and they are best given a wide berth on the beach as the tentacles can be long and invisible on the sand.

Later in the week we were told of a small mammal trapping survey organised by the Royal Society of Biology, well we just had to book place.

We arrived and had a little walk around the site with Monty before meeting DW who took us to the first tranch of traps down by the saltmarsh which had caught several Wood Mice.

It's not a tick but something from the food or bedding placed in the trap

The second tranch had been placed in a more wooded area and here Bank Voles were order of the day. We evn got the opportunity to wrangle on from the trap, first time we'd done that since we were small mammal trapping in Israel in 1978, thankfully we didn't embarrass ourself. And the third tranch was again close to the saltmarsh and here a Common Shrew was captured. unfortunately it was getting rather hot and Monty was beginning to get uncomfortable so we had to leave the group to it with about 50 more traps to inspect.

With the recent good weather the moth trap has been out at Base Camp on a regular, almost nightly, basis but catches have been worryingly poor, mostly small numbers of Heart & Darts and Dark Arches with little else and hardly a micromoth seen apart from a few Chrysoteuchia culmellas.

Excitement hit unpercedented levels when we found this Pebble Hooktip in the trap - a species we've not recorded at Base Camp before.

The same trap held a corking Poplar Hawkmoth too - always a joy to see these gentle giants.

More excitement followed the next morning when we saw a small micro sat on the top of the egg boxes. Carefully we potted it up to discover after some searching through the field guide it was a Eucosoma campoliliana, another new species for Base Camp.

And the excitement didn't stop with the moths! While watching our bee hotel we saw a small skinny wasp that appeared to watching when the bees were coming and going and sure enough when it had seen a bee go in to a tube backwards to lay its egg and then leave it would sneak in to lay its own egg! This watching behaviour gaver us the chance to get a few decent pics and identify it as a Five-Spotted Club-Horned Wasp - no we'd never heard of it either but it transpired that according to the NBN Atlas this is the most northerly confirmed record in the country, beating the previous by a couple of miles!!! No doubt someone from a few miles up the road is going to say ah yes we get them in the garden all the time but hey-ho it's quite an accolade until such a thing happens!

A more or less empty moth trap the other morning had this rather beautiful but somewhat unwelcome visitor, a Candy Striped Spider. Needless to say it was evicted!

A family visit to the Southside at the weekend took us past Marshside RSPB reserve where a Glossy Ibis had been in residence for a couple of weeks or so. We had just five minutes to 'tick n run' and luckily it was out in the open and not too far away. It had its beak out but as soon as we put the camera to the screen window it tucked it away and promptly went to sleep. the chap next to us said "well that's that for an hour or so" so we had to make do with pic of it snoozing for our Photo Year List Challenge which now stands at 156.

Interesting that we've seen one here in three of the last four years, is it the same one? I don't think they breed in Britain yet but could be wrong, if they do it'll still only be in very small numbers or just a single pair in any one year. 

Recently we worked with our favourite school group, from the Midlands, on the beach and they had some super finds

A lump of pyroclasic flow, a Curved Razor and a Barnacle encrusted Mussel

Mermaid's Purse from a Thornback Ray

Striped Venus, Pod Razor, Common Otter Shell

Iceland Cyrpine, Pod Razor, Bean Razor, Tellins, Mussels, Banded Wedge Shells

But we hit the jackpot when we found this Limpet. Nothing special about Limpets you might say and you'd be right they can be as common as muck but not on Blackpool's coastline they're not. We'd had a quick look to check the lie of the land before the children arrived and been lucky enough to find Blackpool's only Limpet in it's usual place close to and now just south of where the old storm water pipe used to go out to sea. It's bee na while since we last found it and today it was in more or less the same place so we're assuming it is the same one and we couldn't find any just to the north of the storm water overflow where we've seen it before so we think it probably is the same one. 

But the one in the pic is a new one - a second individual and it was found 100 yards or more north of the other on the north side of the slipway, never seen one that side before...and that begs the question how many more are there???

With this pic we've just doubled the local Limpet population

Great days on safari and as often as not you don't have to go too far to see some awesome wildlife.

Where to next? The Big Butterfly Count has started and National Whale and Dolphin Watch starts next weekend so we're going to be busy - Watch this space - Better still Get Involved

In the meantime let us know who's watching who in your outback

Every cloud has a silver lining...and sometimes it's actually golden!

The  Safari is issuing a RANT WARNING; those of a nervous disposition should scroll down to the pretty pictures later in the post.

We had an evening soiree planned with the crew from the South-side and for that we'd need some 'baggin' (aka 'snap') as we'd be setting off before tea-time, so Wifey headed to the shops for pies n stuff and returned with a copy of the local paper...we NEVER get that...bear in mind that 8th June is always World Oceans Day...have alook at the front page...shocking!

WHAT??? A seaside town without seagulls??? You really couldn't make it up! Not only that the town's crest/coat of arms has a seagull slap bang in the middle of it!!!

Not sure what the four-legged ant thing is 

A classic case of if there's a problem blame the wildlife and get rid of it, no matter that the river catchment for our beaches contains probably well over a million people all putting lordy knows what down the drains. The gulls thrive because of the vast amounts of litter that are left...by humans; and have learned to rip open plastic bags of rubbish put out overnight by the countless takeaways...get up earlier and out it out just before the  refuse wagon comes in the morning. Some days the drive to work looks like Litter Armageddon just happened. The lads do sterling work picking it all up but they don;t start til 06.00 and the gulls are up n at em around 03.30 now. They are just taking advantage of our sloppy, lazy ways then get all the stick - WRONG we're supposed to be the clever ones, time to get a bit cleverer - or a lot less lazy...and to any tourists out there...you obviously like coming herree so why sh*t the place up with your crap when you leave - bin it or take it home done't leave it on our streets you dirty b******s!!!

But which species is going to get it in the neck next; arre there too many seal and porpoises pooping in the sea, will they have to go too, what about the fish - oh there aren't any the trawlers have got rid of that problem for us, then there's 10000+ waders on the saltmarshes all pooping away that'll wash onto the beaches...get real, there's nothing wrong with wanting clean wholesome bathing waters but there are limits and we should be looking closely at ourselves first before pointing fingers at innocent wildlife.

By the way the sea is not dirty - its much much much cleaner that it was 20 years ago and orders of magnitude cleaner than in the resorts heyday when visitors were like ants on the beach - you really didn't want to go in the water then! Probably cleaner now than for any time in the last 100 years, it's just that the new EU regulations are stricter..and so they should be the sea is NOT a dumping ground!

Ahh dumping that brings us nicely on to rant number two again associaterd with World Oceans Day and our unsympathetic, unsustainable and downright callous use of wildlife.

We went to the beach to find it full of families enjoying the beautiful sunshine. The sand was golden, the tide was in ( and clean!) the big boys were playing with their toys.

Frank had a little play with his ball and a paddle

and in the midst of all this a fisherman had been digging bait and chucked away wait he didn't want/couldn't use...no thought of not digging so many Lugworms or taking them home and freezing them...no chuck em and get some more - what a waste! And then fishermen often have the audacity to say they are 'guardians of the environment' well a few might be but a fair proportion aren't.

 The Speckled Sea Lice will take ages to eat that lot!

Enough of the ranting on the with the proper stuff...

The previous night's moth trapping was the best of the year so far with two moths and two caddisflies  succumbing to the lure of the UV light.

Another, more normally marked, Scalloped Hazel and a Bee Moth along with two individuals of Mystacides longicornis.

A very poor showing and we're getting worried about the fate of our moths round here.

Eventually evening came round and we picked up our Extreme Photographer and headed down the motorway to meet up with the gang, from where we followed their lead to our site for the night.

And what a site it is, somehow we've never been there before; 85 ha of mature woodland surrounding a remnant lowland mire - beautiful. We were taken up to the tower hide  by the Ranger and were duly impressed with the surroundings. So much so that we spent so much time taking it all in we totally forgot to get the camera out! A Buzzard flapped lazily at eye-level and away over the trees while a Yellowhammer looked for all the world like  a Canary in the scrub below us.

A train rattled by in the distance beyond the far trees on the world's first ever railway line between built between two cities.

The central part of the reserve is former peat workings, manually extracted by hard work rather than machine cut like the illegal turf cutting going on in Ireland at the moment.

The Rangers have been busy creating bunds and blocking drains over the last 20 years or so in an attempt to rewet the peat and it's working

They've also been removing encroaching scrub and invasive non-native Rhododendron all of which is having the effect that Sphagnum Moss is regrowing and the area is once again become an active raised bog...gonna take a long long time to get it back to pristine but the longest journeys start with the shortest of steps...and more importantly it doesn't take humans long to undo what Nature took thousands of years to create!

In the low evening sun the Cotton Grass was looking splendid

In areas were mire vegetation was becoming well established Round Leaved Sundew was found in abundance, this one had caught an insect (arrowed) despite being rather smothered in Cotton Grass seeds - an occupational hazard here we would imagine.

But it wasn't the plants we had come to see, here's a clue...

Now what might live under refugia like these???

We got a Slow Worm under an early lift, close but not close enough! Then a few lifts further on we connected with our quarry for the evening - an Adder! our first in Britain - - at laaaaaasssstttttttt!!!

Too quick for a pic on this very warm evening. The warmth somehow hadn't brought the dragonflies out and we only saw one 4-Spotted Chaser all the time we were out so there were none of the hoped for Hobbys that are a specialty of the site.

The Ranger lifted more tiles for us until at last another Adder and this time it stuck around just about long enough

Shame about those two grass leaves right in front of her face. getting pics wasa nightmare, the light under the tiles was dark but all around was bathed in strong low sunlight...we pitied the poor camera - our Extreme Photographer might have got a much better shot from a slightly different angle - we'll wait and see what he sends through.

An excellent evening our with the Hesitant Weasel (that's him in the white t-shirt above) and crew and thanks to all involved especially the Ranger for taking the time to take us in to this normally out of bounds part of the reserve. We'll certainly be visiting this most very excellent site again and aren't sure now why we've never been before - been missing a treat!

And it wasn't quite all over, after dropping of our Extreme Photographer back home we tired but happy drove the lat three miles and waiting at the last set of traffic lights we had a Peregrine fly over going to its roost site in the town centre followed by about half a dozen Swifts - good end to a perfect evening especially after all the earlier rants - all is not lost keep up the good work folks!

And we got three Kestrel records for the current survey...please take part if you can.
Where to next? Another hot day so we probably won't be out with Frank til it cools down a bit and we've got chores with a paint brush to do in the garden so news from Base Camp is quite likely - what will we find?
In the meantime let us know where  you have been missing in your outback.