Two Reds and a Moth

The last few days have been a little frustrating with unsettled weather and trips that didn't quite go to plan. My first trip was with Kath to a site near Hawes in North Yorkshire where Red Squirrels can still be found. The weather was however against us with some very heavy rain as we crossed The Pennines. We decided to head back home but eventually it cleared up and we went to see if we could find some squirrels. Our luck was in and a couple of reds were around the feeding station deep in the forest. I managed a few images before the midges arrived and we decided to head home on what had been more like a Winter's day at times with temps down to seven degrees...quite cold for a summer's day !!
My next trip out was with Mike and we were to meet up with Paul at a site up on the Lancashire Moors where Paul had recently had excellent views of an hunting long eared owl. Before we left my next door neighbour called to say he had found an unknown creature in his garden. I went to investigate and found myself looking at a beautiful eyed hawk moth. I had never seen one of these before and brought Mike for a look before we departed on our owl safari.
We met up with Paul and went to the site where the owl had been giving good views as it hunted it's moorland home. On this visit we were unlucky ...we did see the owl but only briefly as it swooped down the road and away over the moorland not to be seen again....that is until our next visit when hopefully we may be lucky. The only sighting of note was a very distant red fox watching us from a moorland wall about six hundred yards away in rapidly failing light...hence the very poor record images above.
So all in all a little frustrating at times but that's how it goes sometimes. Still very enjoyable to be about and about in our wonderful English Countryside and we all look forward to more encounters with our special and varied wildlife. Hope you enjoy the images above..mostly record shots but hopefully next time I may have some quality owl shots to post !!