Day 8
After spending a short time watching the feeders we turned in
for some much needed sleep before walking out along the road to a bridge over a
woodland stream and then walked up a track. We saw lots of wintergreen in the
ditch and roadside, as well as lots of Silver studded blues and some hawkers and
emerald dragonflies but they were too fast and difficut to identify as they
didn't settle.
After a lovely late lunch of Salmon on pasta with the
addition of Don from Stroud who was also coming to the hides we got into the
car and drove to Sabrina's site which was about 10 minutes away and a lot
easier to get to. Once we were in the hides, she put the bait out around the
clearing and then left us to it.
It was quite quiet for a while with the interest being a few
gulls that came and investigated some of the caches until David noticed something
moving in the clearing in front of us. A quick look as it walked away and it
looked like a fox, until it turned round and it was a wolf.
It was very nervous and kept well into the woodland edge. About 15 mins later we saw a bear arrive and over the next 7 hours we had multiple sittings of the red-ear tagged bear and at least 4 sightings of the wolf. The bear ambled about eating small scraps and every now and then took larger lumps off into the forest to cache. The wolf appeared to be watching the bear and possibly raiding the caches after it had left but it never came out of the forest edge.
After the bear had left we took turns to sleep and around 4.30 I stood up to stretch, glanced out of the small side window to see a Wolverine investigating the food hidden in front of the big hide. I woke David up with difficulty and we watched it as it dug up food and then it trotted off behind the hut with a bone. We had our fingers crossed that it would return, which it did and eventually it worked it's way round to where we could see it from our windows. We enjoyed great views for about half an hour before it took a bone off into the forest and didn't return.
It was very nervous and kept well into the woodland edge. About 15 mins later we saw a bear arrive and over the next 7 hours we had multiple sittings of the red-ear tagged bear and at least 4 sightings of the wolf. The bear ambled about eating small scraps and every now and then took larger lumps off into the forest to cache. The wolf appeared to be watching the bear and possibly raiding the caches after it had left but it never came out of the forest edge.
After the bear had left we took turns to sleep and around 4.30 I stood up to stretch, glanced out of the small side window to see a Wolverine investigating the food hidden in front of the big hide. I woke David up with difficulty and we watched it as it dug up food and then it trotted off behind the hut with a bone. We had our fingers crossed that it would return, which it did and eventually it worked it's way round to where we could see it from our windows. We enjoyed great views for about half an hour before it took a bone off into the forest and didn't return.
Returning to Sabrina's
we had another lovely breakfast, took a short walk down the road looking at the
flowers and butterflies. We found a copper which turned out to be Scarce Copper
and also found some more Lesser Marbled Fritillaries. We walked down to the
lake and found lots of flowers including Marsh Cinquefoil, Fringed Loosestrife, Rosebay Willowherb, Red Campion and cranesbills.
As we walked back we came across these old Granaries which are now being protected as part of the historical landscape.
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