I HAVE written many times in this column about how wildlife has been able to cope so well in the face of industry and especially quarries.

This week I visited the Threlkeld Quarry and Mining Museum about three miles from Keswick on the A66.

I decided to visit this museum because I knew there was a firm Lancashire connection.

The museum has a collection of vintage cranes and vehicles and run by the Vintage Excavator Trust. Some of the machines there were given by Castle Cement of Clitheroe. The museum is open from Easter to the end of October (ring 017687 79747).

The quarry itself is huge and until it closed it produced very high quality granite. I expected to find lots of wildlife to explore and I was not disappointed. Close to the visitors’ centre the shop and the toilet, I saw on a bench in the picnic site and soon spotted a curlew and a very wet and sleepy looking brown hare. Speaking to the museum staff who are all volunteers and very knowledgeable about quarrying and the wildlife I found that curlews and brown hares were both common residents along with pied wagtails and in the summer months were joined by wheatears. These days skylarks are not as common as they used to be, but as the rain which stopped for once in this wet summer, a lark soared high in the air and poured out its song.

I found that meadow pipits were common and in the spring these little birds played unwilling hosts to the cuckoo.

These crafty birds remove eggs and young from the pipit’s nest and one huge cuckoo is reared by two tiny foster parents.

Thus I had a lovely day in the Lake District, but enjoyed views of machines which spent their working lives in our region.