Day 14 - A water trough and moorland birds

Day 14 was completely unplanned. I had to go to out briefly later in the afternoon and I decided I'd find something wild to do whilst I was out :)

It turned out to be a great couple of hours! I was driving along the A6 and I thought about a pond I'd last visited about 2 years ago. It's a dew pond and is just off the road side and at the end of Chee Dale.  On the short walk from the layby to the pond, I spotted plenty of flowers including crosswort, hedge bedstraw and pignut...

 

and some quaking grass - one of my favourites!

Last time I visited there was plenty of life in the pond and it looked like this.  Today it looked very different. There was only a tiny bit of water in the middle, hidden amongst the stones and plants. 

The only creature I could see was a slug.

There was a horsetail forest all around the edges

wild strawberry flowers

speedwell

Next to the pond was this water trough so I decided to see if anything was living in there instead.

I found tadpoles, pondskaters and diving beetles, as well as some snails.

I saved this soldier beetle from drowning in there too. I saved a soldier beetle who had fallen in a pond last Sunday too! Here he is drying off on the grass...



After discovering what was living in the water, I made my way back to the car.

 

I saw my first orchid of the year, complete with two very tiny moths!

birdsfoot trefoil

I took the wilder, more interesting roads home, as I often do!

I also looked for grouse and got great views of some young ones. The mother was close to the road side and I pulled in and could hear the little chicks then spotted them as they moved around. It was a real treat that they were so close!

Further along, the calls of golden plover could be heard... you can hear them too in this short video, though it has picked up a lot of wind noise so you'll have to turn up the volume a bit to hear the plover over the wind!

 
There was a juvenile golden plover on the horizon - his head kept popping up and down!

The weather remained bleak but I love it when it's like this!

My final stop was in Flash to see the well dressing, which went up yesterday.