Rarest animal you have seen out

[w00dsmoke]

I saw a honey buzzard in Ardnmurchan on route to a weeks camping...and when I got to my place for the week, the next morning there were sea eagles nesting on the cliff behind where my bivi was pitched The rarest mammals have got to be the wallaby's on a Loch Lomond Island, other than that it would be a wildcat dragging a still born lamb from a field.

 

[swagman]

A Platypus

 

[Zammo]

I've seen a black squirrel a couple of times, around Letchworth where I used to live.

(Not my photo).

 

[British Red]

Loving "Ninja Squirrel" there Zam! I've heard of them but never seen one - very cool!

 

[Dunelm]

It's not simply the rarity it's seeing things when/where you previously thought they they were not around. For instance I get a thrill seeing red squirrals in Durham but go over to Cumbria and you get sick of the sight of them (metaphorically). I had never seen a kingfisher then last year I was working on one of the poxiest housing estates you could imagine which had a small beck running through it full of old wellies and oil drums. I looked over a wall and quick as a flash a kingfisher flew up stream in a blue and orange blur.

I've seen and caught great crested newts as a kid and a few years ago I saw a Golden Eagle in Borrowdale, Cumbria. I once saw a pair of firecrests as well but that was about 30 years ago on a pit-heap planted with spruce.

 

[Pablo]

I'd like to just change my rarity sighting please.

Yesterday I saw a what I think is a Sun conure. I know there are pockets of escapees but never thought I'd see one along the road!

Poor quality pic from mobile camera, but you can just see the orange chest. Noisy blighter.

Pablo.

 

[perpetualelevator]

I didn't know that black squirrels were rare in England. You can't swing a cat without hitting one in Toronto. They're actually just mutant gray squirrels. Although I have seen a white (not albino) squirrel in Exeter, Ontario, which apparently is a small isolated population.

I found a star-nosed mole once when camping. Now there's a weird looking critter. They're not actually rare, but you don't see them very often.

I was also surprised a few years ago to see Pelicans on the Bow River in Alberta. I'd always assumed they were marine birds, but these were pretty far from any ocean. Apparently they migrate through in the spring.

 

[GreenmanBushcraft]

I'd like to just change my rarity sighting please.

Yesterday I saw a what I think is a Sun conure. I know there are pockets of escapees but never thought I'd see one along the road!

Poor quality pic from mobile camera, but you can just see the orange chest. Noisy blighter.

Pablo.

I used to have a pet sun conure, noisy, thats one word for it lol!!!

Kris

 

[Chainsaw]

Haggis for me too, think it was a greater haggis rather than the skinnier longer lesser version. (poor photo)

:sad6:

not seen much, love goldfinches but can never get a good photo of them.

Cheers,

Alan

 

[JonnyP]

Haggis for me too, think it was a greater haggis rather than the skinnier longer lesser version. (poor photo)


:sad6:

not seen much, love goldfinches but can never get a good photo of them.

Cheers,

Alan

Looks like the hair of bearded collie on the front...

 

[GreenmanBushcraft]

Haggis for me too, think it was a greater haggis rather than the skinnier longer lesser version. (poor photo)

:sad6:

not seen much, love goldfinches but can never get a good photo of them.

Cheers,

Alan

Lol, you have to love photoshop. Or is that my ex?

 

[Chainsaw]

whadya mean photoshop, that's slander!

I saw that fella in Kelvingrove Museum so it must be real! Even the tabletop's the same! You must have seen them in the wild running about with one leg shorter than the other so they can run round the sides of hills easier!!??

I'll get me coat as they say...... :theyareon

Cheers,

Alan

 

[Burnt Ash]

Whats the Rarest animal you have spotted while out on a bushcraft trip?

Kris

Combining 'rare' with 'unusual sighting' (not the same thing), it would have to be the common (hazel) doormouse I saw hanging upside down on the peanut feeder outside our kitchen window a couple of years back. It was in the middle of the day and there was absolutely no question about identification. The distance from eyeball to peanut feeder is just a few feet. He was there for several minutes and I had plenty of time to fetch a pair of binoculars to get a really close look at him. What made this so unusual is that doormice are usually nocturnal and arboreal in habit.

Also, a couple of years ago, we had a snow white albino squirrel in our wood, which I saw on several occasions and as close as about 15 feet.

I'm lucky that I live in the country and see stoats, weasels and badgers not infrequently. We see ospreys on passage on our local reservoirs each spring and autumn and there is one place where I teach where kingfishers buzz about all day. Barn owls live in our neighbours' farm buildings and we see them often.

Rarity is a relative thing. I once visited an opencast phosphate mine in Florida that had won awards for wetland habitat reclamation on its worked-out deposits. I recall there seemed to be an osprey perched on practically every tree and telegraph pole.

Burnt Ash

 

[John Fenna]

Recently see in Croatia - the Lesser Spotted Generous Human!
So rare is this creature that few are to be seen outside of captive examples on the BCUK web site, but in Croatia it seems there is a good number of wild ones.
While whitewater rafting my team of 10 was given a lunch of chops, chicken wings, stuffed squid, bread, fizzy pop for the kids and home made wine for the adults. Further wine was pressed on us - even a jug for "later on". A couple of days later the guardian of a mountain hut gave four of us big bowls of wild-boar stew and penne pasta and a bottle of red wine because our dehydrated yech looked so foul...
It is good to know that the breed is not extinct in the wild.
Perhaps the BCUK should start a captive breeding program to make sure that there is pleanty of gene mixing and little interbreeding, just to keep the gene pool healthy....

 

[BOD]

I saw the Lesser Adjutant two days ago.

That's the sky.

Maroon langur for the land

And the yellow and green frogfish for the sea (Edit: May I change that to a seven-gilled shark?)

 

[ddokkum]

I did some hiking around loch ness and this is what i captured on video;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h63_1Cg6gg

 

[gorilla]

i saw a fish with only one head pulled out of the Mersey last week

 

[Bob the Blacksmith]

Pine martin in north Wales.

 

[gunnix]

moose 2 weeks ago.. maybe not so special but was really glad to see it

 

[michiel]

I've seen a Hoopoe a few years ago in Italy. It's extinct in Belgium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoopoe