All's fair in love and war

Leighton Moss on Friday was stunning. Warm, sunny and full of signs of spring including the "all's fair in love and war" which comes as birds and mammals get around to pairing up for some baby making.
Black Headed guls were making an absolute racket preparing to defend their territory which will evetually mean protecting eggs and then young from the circling marsh harriers, otters and other predators.
We saw a black backed gul gobbling up and enormous eel.
Lapwings with their electronic signal sounding noise soaring around with each other doing crazy aerial acrobatics (which are very hard to capture on camera)
Also the proud and graceful great crested grebes displaying to each other with a balletic dance involving swift head movements and fluffing up of beautiful crest. Witnessed them in anger though when a rival male shot across the lake and a violent scrap occured. It was quite a way away but managed to get the gist of it in pictures.
Went up to see if we could get any more shots of Swoop (our barn owl) but she was nowhere to be seen.

The first lizard of Spring!

I was very surprised and pleased to see this little eye peering up at me - a common lizard on the side of Longridge Fell! It's obviously just come out of hibernation as normally it would have been off like a shot before I'd got anywhere near it.

Watching a Barn Owl Strike

We had the great fortune to see a barn owl strike this early evening, and managed to capture it on camera. (Well, one of us did - Jo has spent the past 2 hours spluttering language that would cause a barn owl to glow pink as she'd put her lens on the wrong setting). Not the greatest photographs ever, but at least it's possible to see what's going on.

I'm not so sure what it's caught - a mole?

Not a happy bunny...

This unfortunate rabbit was found just at the entrance to a small evergreen forest. It was quite fresh, and there was still a fair amount of meat left on the skeleton. As you an see, the head had been removed and the fur/skin had been torn back from the carcass. Various organs were scattered about. Click on the image for a much larger version of the photo.

Any ideas about what may have had rabbit pie? Our current guess is that it's a stoat.

Spring emerges from out of the grey gloom

After a couple of gloomy, grey weeks where every effort to venture outside seemed to be met with camera-ruining drizzle, the sun finally shone and I was able to get out and feel the emergence of Spring, though Jo was unfortunately chained to her desk.

We're aware of where our local hares spend their day, so I managed to get pretty close to them before they hopped into the next field and out of sight. Usually the first sign of a hare is its rapidly disappearing backside!

Also spotted were three buzzards, a cormorant, some randy geese, the odd lapwing, and a few curlews. The colourful red fungus in the final photos is scarlet elf cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea) which is making an appearance in quite a few woods at the moment.

Back up Barn Owl Hill

Just trolling over Barn Owl Hill in ever decreasing light and weird misty evening gloaming, and saying, having scanned the usual haunts at 5.30pm, "Nah......maybe during a nice late light evening in April-May-June, we could sit out at 9ish and see a busy parent out hunting, but for now...... OH MY GOD!! There she be!" (or he... we cannot claim to be expert at sexing a dim lit flying barny- even Collins Complete Guide to British Birds doesn't go near to explaining the differences)
Anyway great viewing lasting a good 15 minutes as ...IT flew over the fields on both sides and into and out of conifer woodland and landed on a post in a copse of broadleaf leafless youthful trees. We managed to take some pretty close quarter shots of it -you get close the light's bad; the light's good you don't get close!! La di da!!
Anyway a few shots that make us smile happily. Did we say we lurve barn owls...
Who couldn't?