On Safari with Dave

A meet-up with some of the gang down at Burton Mere RSPB reserve, down at the thin end of the Dee estuary in Cheshire, was on the cards a couple of weeks ago, somewhere we don't get to very often. While waiting for the other half of the gang to arrive I had a scan over the large pool in front of the visitor centre seeing several Ruff and a few Black-tailed Godwits , in the distance a 'swarm' of House Martins had gathered over the far side of the reserve after a short shower. Meanwhile Cliff had spotted a couple of European Hornets going about their business around a Bramble thicket to the side of the centre. I had a look at them, they're not something we see often and these are the furthest north I've seen them in Britain. They were great to watch but not so easy to photograph as they spent quite a lot of time hidden by the foliage and flew from spot to spot frequently so getting the camera to focus on them was more luck than judgement. Almost got it right... Sti...

Back in the good old days we did some work on a private nature reserve with a few good mates. One of whom, Andy, revisited it with me last weekend to have a shuffy about to see what we could see.  It was a mild day but without much sunshine so we struggled to find any reptiles in their usual places as we set off on our wander. Birdlife too was hard to come by but then it's that time of year when many of the summer birds have already left, the winter birds haven't arrived yet and the local residents are moulting and keeping their heads down. Only a Wren made it's presence felt. I saw, and I'm not sure if Andy did too, a Stoat dashing along the winding footpath about 20 yards ahead of us. I've not seen one for yonks - not since the now infamous 'Stork on the bridge' incident at WWT's Martin Mere reserve a few years ago. Odd snippets of sunshine between the clouds brought out some butterflies but as soon as cloud cover came back they quickly descended to ...