#LakeDistrictBid Advent Calendar Day 10 - Because of the Wildlife

We love living in Cumbria and particularly enjoy sharing our life in the Lake District with all the local wildlife - whether it's hearing the sound of buzzards "pinging" overhead as they hunt for food, startling a red deer or cursing a red squirrel that won't sit still for a photo, wildlife in Cumbria is everywhere.

If you want to see it our best advise is to slow down, take a pair of binoculars and be prepared to sit still for a long time - your chances are also greatly improved if you don't take your dog with you.

Gaining World Heritage Site Status would enable us to better protect the wildlife we already have and create and protect environments to allow existing residents to flourish and maybe attract a few new ones too.

Please click HERE to visit the Lake District National Park Authority website where you can learn more about the whole process and register your support for our bid to achieve World Heritage Site Status.

Click HERE to go back & start the advent calendar from to Day 1.

Kestrel

Frog! (Anyone know which sort?)

Possibly Marsh Harrier (we're still learning!)

Deer!

Badger in our garden

Golden Eagle in Riggindale

Osprey

The only decent pic we've ever managed of a red squirrel...

...this is what a pic of a red squirrel usually looks like. :-)

30 Days Wild: Day 1 - Couch Potato

Today The Wildlife Trusts have launched their 30 Days Wild campaign with the aim of encouraging all of us to do something wild every single day throughout June.  Not wild in a "I got legless drunk and threw a TV set threw a window" way, more in a "I'm connecting with the wild things in nature" way

I'll be honest, so far as I'm concerned they could have picked a better month.  This June is possibly the busiest month I have ever had and over the course of the next 30 days I'll be visiting Grizedale, Kendal, Leyland, Alston Hall, Wokingham, Leighton Moss, London (for a week), Portsmouth, Penrith and Wigan for work purposes and the occasional bit of enjoyment.  We'll also be spending 4 days cycling the entire route around Morecambe Bay for the launch of the new Morecambe Bay Cycle Way.  Oh, and the deadline for our book is 30th June plus it's my birthday on the 18th June so there'll be at least one day with a hangover.

View from the scopes at Foulshaw Moss

I'll be blogging every day for the entire month to chart our wild encounters - some large, some small - to prove that whatever you're doing and wherever you are, you can make time and space in your life for nature.

Today I'm starting small and simple with something you can do from your desk or sofa - Cumbria Wildlife Trust have set up an "Osprey Cam" on the osprey nest in Foulshaw Moss.  Most days you can visit the reserve to get a view through the manned scopes on the viewing platforms, but right now, wherever you are, you can click on this link to see live footage streamed directly from the nest.  It's well worth watching too, in the past 24 hours 2 chicks have hatched from the 3 eggs laid and while mum is busy protecting them from the wind and rain dad goes out hunting for food and occasionally hides out in his roosting tree ("man shed") nearby.

If you're new to osprey watching check out their handy "Know your osprey" blog and take a peek at the footage below to see the moment we discovered there were three eggs.

Tomorrow we'll be going wild on Segways with Go Ape in Grizedale Forest so watch this space for red squirrels, gorgeous views and possibly the occasional bruise...

*That's* not a bog, THIS is a bog!

Osprey

A few years ago I wrote a light-hearted piece called "Survival Tips for the Bog Bound" outlining some practical, if not entirely serious, approaches to crossing boggy ground on the fells.  Having now spent an afternoon planting seedlings in a proper bog, it's clear I didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

Foulshaw Moss is a Cumbria Wildlife Trust (CWT) property a few miles from where we live.  It's best known at the moment for being home to a beautiful pair of osprey, but they are only a small part of the story. Since 1996 when they took over the reserve from the Forestry Commission CWT have been hard at work returning the bog pristine condition - they've done loads, but there's plenty still left to do.

PROPER bog!

Many years ago this area was a huge boggy expanse and crossing the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay was a preferable alternative to crossing the bog.  During the last century much of the bog was drained for agricultural reasons and in the 1960s was heavily planted with non-native species,  but as the water went away so did many of the rare plants and animals associated with it.  Stage one of the restoration was about removing of the non native trees and rebuilding raised banks to keep the water in.

Now that there is plenty of water around it's time to give nature a hand by replanting bog species to bind the soil and help maintain the conditions.  In all there are 27,000 seedlings to plant.  27,000 - that's enough to give me back ache just thinking about it!

One of the things I've often said to people about our new life is that we have a lot less money than we used to have, but we have a lot more time - and what's the point in having all that time unless you can spend it helping out a little, so with my philanthropic head firmly on, off we set, in the pouring rain, to plant seedlings in an enormous bog.

Expecting to spend the day getting very wet and muddy I opted for a set of ancient waterproofs which were so big they reminded me of school field trips.

Steve decided to get to grips with the plants we'd be working with...

And this is just a small selection to start us off.

Step one was distributing the seedling trays around the section of the reserve we were working on and step two was planting them all.

A spot of impromptu bridge building!

Reserve warden Simon showing me how to planter works.

Our handiwork.

Men at work

Men still at work - I did help, honest!

By the end of the day we'd managed to plant around 850 seedlings (only 26,150 to go!) and as if to reward all our hard efforts the sun shone down, brightening the landscape and almost making me forget my aching back (only almost!).

All that remained was for me to try taking an arty shot of some dead trees...

...before we finished off our flask of tea and maltloaf (the new orange one - have you tried it?  Fantastic!) while we watched the osprey from afar.  That's them in the picture below - they're on the small tree in the middle, right at the back.

Foulshaw Moss Osprey

And if that's not clear enough for you - here's some video Steve took with his super zoom lens of one of them preening.

Hide and Seek

Leighton Moss

I can't believe I've never been bird watching before.  If you've read previous blogs you'll know I've been trying to get to grips with identifying birds (specifically the "doink doink" bird) as we've hiked around the fells, but today was my very first time at an RSPB reserve with the specific intention of spotting birds, and what an amazing day we had; I'm not sure if it was just beginner's luck of if the birds are always this abundant up here.

Lapwing

We'd spent most of the morning hiking around Hutton Roof Crags (more of those in a future blog) and after a sarnie decided to head across to the RSPB nature reserve at Leighton Moss.  As RSPB members it was free to get in; it only costs us £3 per month for our membership so a very cheap day out.  The lovely lady at reception gave us a quick guide to the reserve and told us what birds had been spotted already today.  I mentioned that we were newbies and that I'd be hard pressed to tell a Pigeon from a Parakeet, but I was armed with my binoculars and my iChirp app and I was keen as mustard.

Black Tailed Godwits (apparently)

We started off at Lilian's Hide where there were dozens of Black Headed Gulls nesting and making a right old racket.  My none bird head wondered what I could possibly see here but I settled down with my binoculars and pretty soon I was engrossed in my own Attenborough style wildlife programme - except this was right in front of me.  I saw territorial battles, the odd spat and what I'm guessing was a demanding female bird beating up her hen pecked partner and demanding fish, which he duly supplied.

Marsh Harriers and Hutton Roof Crags

Leaving the screeching gulls behind we next headed for Tim Jackson hide and hunkered down for a spot more spotting.  I was immediately taken with a rather odd looking bird at the waters edge; large and blackish but with big pointy feathers sticking out of the back of its head.  I took a snap and started comparing it to the list of birds the RSPB had helpfully adorned the hide with and pretty soon it had a name: the Lapwing.  It didn't do much at first but then it began flying around and calling - what a brilliantly bonkers bird! It flies like it's been on the gin all day and sounds like a short wave radio.  In fact I think maybe those large feathers sticking out the back of its head disguise an antennae and it actually is receiving short wave radio.

Marsh Harrier

Whilst the Lapwing may have been relatively easy to identify other birds proved a little trickier, especially to a complete novice.  There were some brown speckledy birds wading around in the shallows and I'd thought they were Snipes, but a very nice man pointed out they were in fact Black Tailed Godwits and he was far more interested in them than he was in my Lapwing, but it was the two large brown birds away in the distance which were causing the most excitement.  When I asked what they were I was told they were Marsh Harriers and they were gamboling around in the air in much the way I might had I suddenly been granted the gift of flight.

Osprey

After a brief visit to Griesdale Hide we walked across the reserve to Lower Hide, which was very lovely and very quiet with nothing unusual to report, but we were in for a treat on our return journey.  As we passed a man gazing into the sky with his binoculars he turned and stopped us and asked if we'd seen the Osprey and pointed towards more large birds in the sky.  Our untrained eyes had thought these were still the Marsh Harriers, but apparently not and, once we got our eye in, we began to spot the differences.  I couldn't believe how lucky were were being on our very first ever bird watching trip and I was beginning to feel ever so slightly hooked on the activity.  I'd already decided that I needed new binoculars and Steve definitely needed upgraded camera equipment if he was to capture these amazing creatures on film.  (Well, OK, not "on film" anymore, but you know what I mean!).

Avocet

Our last stop of the day was over at Allen hide which is just down the road from the main nature reserve and overlooks Morecambe Bay, by now it was getting late (8pm) but we thought we'd pop over see what we could see.  Turns out we got to see Avocets.  These were the only birds of the day that I had never even heard of before.  I've watched nature programmes and heard most of the others mentioned but not these.  To be fair there were no experts around to back up our identification, but they are quite distinctive birds with beaks that curve upwards at the end so we're pretty sure we got it right - though please do let me know if we're wide of the mark.

After all that excitement we decided it was time to head for home.  On top of all the birds above we also saw loads of birds you might find in your garden, spotted a group of Swallows swooping and looping overhead and I think I may possibly have spotted a Bearded Tit in the reed beds, but it was too tiny and too far away to be sure.  And the perfect close to the day?  Being serenaded by the "doink doink" bird (or Nuthatch as he's better known) as we got back to the car.  Perfect.

Sunset over Kent Estuary