What do I see on my daily walk ?

For the last couple of years there's a walk I try and do every day, sometimes twice a day, in winter and summer. It's a popular walk, about three miles long, and you often see other people and joggers out, as well as all the farm and estate vehicles.  So you wouldn't expect to see much wildlife there - or would you ?

When I'm out, I see all sorts from new born lambs to field mice. The walk has loads of trees beside the path that hosts all kinds of animals. I often see red kites or buzzards gliding, stoats, squirrels and deer - and maybe even a kingfisher ! Read on to find out more.

The amazing thing the stoat did

I was going to write about something else this week, until something really interesting happened on the walk today. It took less than four minutes but it was something I have never seen before. It was a miserable walk because it was raining a lot, and we had to change socks half way through. It had been raining so far that the stream we were going to cross was too wide, and we had to go around. On the drive back from the moor dad stopped the car to check a dead corvid by the side of the road. Then he looked in the rear view mirror and he saw what he thought were some baby rabbits and a stoat playing on the road !

Seeing 21 different species in one place.

Last Saturday me and Dad went for a walk in the evening around two lochs quite near my house. Dad had gone the previous day, and seen loads of wildlife, and we went back to try another look at one of the birds he saw. This week is really about how much wildlife you can see in one walk, although I'm will write the wildlife Dad saw on his walk as well.

The lochs are called the Upper Rhynd and Lower Rhynd. They are next to one another, and water runs between the upper to the lower loch. Those two lochs, and another one nearby called Carsebreck are famous for thousands of geese coming to them over the winter from Iceland.

Here is a map of where we walked:

Tracking animals in the snow

Yesterday I went on a walk to the Pheasant woods with dad. We went to check on how the buried fox and squirrel were doing (they haven't fully rotted yet) and to get to the place where we buried them, we had to walk across a huge field where sheep normally are.

There have been no sheep in the field for ages, and there had been fresh snow overnight, so it was great for seeing all types of animal footprints. Here are some of the ones we saw:

Working out what a mystery animal was

This is an animal that my dad spotted in the woods about a week ago. I went back with him to the wood where he saw it, but we couldn't spot it. He gave me the photographs and said I had to work out what it was.