A day out in Derbyshire

Today we ventured over the borders and into Derbyshire for a scout of the narrow guage canals in search of water voles but our luck wasn’t in! We did see one of these chubby little mammals at one site but drew a blank on all the other regular haunts we know of. Maybe numbers are down further or maybe we were just a bit too early in the season, though it was gloriously sunny and mild with temperatures of around 15dg – a respectable temperature for any mammal to be active in! After failing on the voles, we headed to site near Monsaldale where previously I’ve had success with corvids coming to food at picnic tables but here again, our luck was running thin with only a few jackdaws coming in to feed. We ended the day with a fruitless photo foray for dippers which, despite seeing them, we were unable to capture on film. The most action came from the Cromford Canal where we managed a few reasonable images of little grebe.