Bempton

Gannet

I've been telling myself for two months that I should be getting out for a visit to Bempton Cliffs. I was wide awake at silly o'clock so I got up, had breakfast then got the trains over there. As it happened, it was a wise move: it was swelteringly hot at home with a Very High pollen count while at Bempton it was merely warm and sunny with a fresh sea breeze and all the grasses uncut and gone to seed, so I had a very pleasant time of it. It was a shock coming back to the sweltering heat.

I got the train to Sheffield and the Scarborough train to Bempton. The highlight of the journey was the three marsh harriers we passed South of Driffield, a male pouncing on something in one field and two female-types quartering the fields a little further along.

Swallow

Bempton Station was full of song. Swallows twittered about the houses, goldfinches and linnets sang from telephone wires, blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang from the roadsides. Swifts swarmed low over the village green and St. Michael's Church, which I found very encouraging. As I set off up Cliff Road the house sparrows of the village gave way to the tree sparrows of the farmland and I was on my way.

Cliff Road 

Skylarks sang in the fields by the roadside, whitethroats and yellowhammers joined the goldfinches and greenfinches singing from the hedgerows. I stopped at every gap in the hedgerows, in part to savour the landscape and in part of wallow in the cool sea breeze. The excellent year for painted ladies continued, I passed at least a dozen fluttering about the roadside nettles and they easily outnumbered the large whites, peacocks and small tortoiseshells.

Bempton Cliffs was, quite understandably, very busy. Very busy nature reserves provoke my antisocial instincts but I've no call to moan about it, they were all there for the same reason I was. And it's a big enough reserve to be able to avoid the jam-packed watchpoints and still have a very rewarding visit. Which is what I did.

Joining the same path i was walking in North Wales the other week.

The tree sparrows fidgeted about the visitor centre, heard more often than seen as they were busy foraging in the undergrowth and the depths of the meadows. Reed buntings were conspicuous, it seemed like there was a singing male in every other bush. Meadow pipits and linnets were numerous but kept their heads down in the meadows most of the time. And all the time a male kestrel quartered the fields and clifftops.

Bempton Cliffs

Gannet
The first sight as I got to the cliffs

Gannets

Gannets a-courting

The gannetry was teeming. All the while there was a background hubbub that reminded me that one of the old names for the gannet was Solan goose. There were gannets of all ages but the majority were adults. The few youngsters that I saw were all very young. Quite a few pairs close to hand on the clifftops were spending most of their time sky-pointing together reinforcing their courtship bonds. 

Gannets

Gannet
A fourth- or fifth-year bird, I think.

Gannet

Gannet

Guillemot

The auks were harder work. Not that they weren't abundant but they were mostly either loafing on the water or dashing madly between cliffs and the sea. The loafing birds looked like a thin peppering about at first glance but there were lots of rafts of auks, mostly guillemots, out there and some of the rafts had fifty or more birds in them. Guillemots and razorbills had the time for a bit of a rest and a preen, the puffins were on the  go all the time. They'd zoom in towards the cliffs with beaks full of sand eels then suddenly disappear from view. As far as getting any photos of any of them was concerned it was a matter of pointing the camera where an auk looked to be headed and hope for the best. To be fair to the camera, this is precisely not what it was designed for and my reaction times aren't what they were. The few photos of puffins I got were by accident as I tried to capture passing fulmars. For once the fulmars showed very well and the kittiwakes were shy of showing. Perhaps the presence of a flock of herring gulls loafing on the clifftop was making them keep close to their nests.

Fulmar

Fulmar

Fulmar

Fulmar

Fulmar

Kittiwake

Puffin

Puffin

Gannet, exit stage top

Gannet

Gannet

Gannet
A second- or third-year bird, I think

Gannet

Gannet
Another one I think is a fourth- or fifth-year bird

Gannet
A second-year bird, I think. I thought something was wrong with its eye but the eye's okay, the apparent bulging wound is juvenile feathers on the ear coverts.

Gannet

On the approach to the New Roll-up watchpoint the gannets were providing breathtaking photo opportunities, flying in and stalling in the wind before dropping down to the clifftops. Of course, having the opportunities and successfully taking them are quite different things, I've plenty of pictures of tails and wingtips as the wind shifted and a gannet dropped, rose or banked. It meant I had a lot of photos to review but there were a few nice ones in there.

Gannets

Gannets

Gannets

The kestrel had drifted over to hunt over the clifftops

Walking back I was glad to see some razorbills had joined the pigeons of the cliff sides.

Pigeons (left) and razorbills

Black-tailed skimmer

I had a wander over to the pool by the car park, hoping to see some tadpoles or froglets. No tadpoles or froglets but plenty of azure damselflies and a black-tailed skimmer. And a willow warbler serenading the visitors to the pool.

Willow warbler

Willow warbler

Yellowhammer

It was slightly cloudier as I walked back to Bempton Station but still very pleasant walking weather. A blackcap joined the yellowhammers, whitethroats and greenfinches singing by one of the farmsteads. I had twenty minutes to wait for the train back to Sheffield after a very good day's birdwatching. Had I stayed local I would probably have been poleaxed by the heat and pollen count, I certainly was by the time I had walked back home from Urmston.

Bempton Cliffs 

Hindley

Blackcap, Low Hall

After yesterday's debacle I needed some exercise and a bit of a morale boost so I decided a woodland walk was in order. I headed for Amberswood, hoping to get willow tits and/or jays onto the monthly tally and perhaps even find some Norfolk hawkers on the wing. The weather forecast was set to muggy with some chance of rain so I carried my light raincoat over my arm.

The 25 was running quarter of an hour late so I decided to walk through the park and get the 250 to the Trafford Centre. The blackbirds, wrens and woodpigeons were in full song. A couple of the robins sang, as did a couple of blackcaps and a chiffchaff. There was neither sight nor sound of any whitethroats anywhere, the brambles that hosted three territories in the past had been strimmed down to the ground to tidy the "waste" ground up last year and they've been replaced by huge stands of goldenrod and willowherbs. On the plus side, there are now two song thrush territories.

Barton Clough

I got over to the Trafford Centre and got the 132 to Wigan, getting off at the entrance to Amberswood on. Manchester Road It's a long haul from the Trafford Centre to Hindley and we passed through two heavy showers along the way. The weather was cool and grey and heavy when I got off the bus but the rain seemed to have taken most of the pollen out of the air.

Amberswood 

I waited for two ponies and their lady riders to pass by before joining the trail into Amberswood. All the usual woodland choristers were in song except the great tits which quietly got on with their business. Blue tits were heard, just, but not seen as they shepherded youngsters through the hedgerows. Swifts and swallows passed overhead but didn't seem minded to stay. I thought it too cool to expect to see any butterflies other than the peacock caterpillars on the nettles and was proved wrong by the ringlets and meadow browns fluttering about the grass verges round the lake. 

Peacock caterpillar 

Amberswood Lake 

My arrival at the lake was heralded by Cetti's warblers, I think it's three birds here, two at the North end and one at the South, but I wouldn't be shocked to find it was four. Nearly all the small birds sneaking about in the reeds turned out to be reed buntings. The exception came as I was scanning about for dragonflies and a reed warbler hopped onto a willow twig by my side. We looked at each other for a while, each pretending we hadn't seen the other, then the warbler decided to have a rummage about in the litter at the base of the reeds where somebody had been pulling out Himalayan balsams. A little further along something seemed to be greatly agitating one of the moorhens in the reeds but I could see neither the bird nor the cause for its alarm.

Out on the water there seemed to be two great crested grebes nests on the go at either end by the reeds and one male cruising about midwater. Mallards, mute swans and tufted ducks cruised about and a couple of black-headed gulls squabbled for no particular reason. A heron jumped up into a sapling the better to watch me on my way as I turned the corner at the Southern end.

Heron

Low Hall 

I crossed Liverpool Road for a wander round Low Hall. The song thrushes did their best to sing over the rest of the chorus but they weren't having it. Mute swans and mallards dozed on the pond and a pair of gadwalls and their near full-sized ducklings dabbled in the far corner. I had a bit of a wander round, watching a mixed flock of great tits and blue tits moving anticlockwise round the dipping pool while a family of long-tailed tits moved clockwise. I surprised a male blackcap which had been rooting about in the nettles at the base of a tree, it flew up to the lowermost branches by my head. I think it was only scared of my treading on it.

Blackcap

I checked the time and the buses and decided my best bet was to walk back through Amberswood and get the 132 back from Manchester Road, I'd get to the stop with about five minutes to spare. And so I did, stopping along the way only to watch a couple of common terns coming in to the lake, a whitethroat taking an immense beakful of caterpillars to its nest, and to allow the ladies and their ponies by as we all headed for the Manchester Road entrance.

I didn't get to see willow tits or jays or Norfolk hawkers at Amberswood today but them's the vagaries. As the bus sat at traffic lights in Atherton town centre a jay slowly flew across the road.

Sefton

Meadow pipit, Crosby Marine Park

It was another day dominated by the pollen count. I headed for the seaside in search of seaborne breezes. Seaforth Nature Reserve has had visits from a roseate tern and a black tern the past few days, I thought I'd go over to have a look see, just in case I might get lucky, then move on for a gentle rummage about somewhere or other. It wasn't the weather for anything especially energetic, which was just as well as energetic was well beyond me today.

Crosby Marine Lake 

I got the trains to Waterloo and wandered over to Crosby Marine Park. A chiffchaff was giving it large from one of the gardens. The lawns by the lakes were liberally dotted with black-headed gulls, lesser black-backs and small crowds of starlings and house sparrows. They were feeding on insects emerging from the grass, any that escaped their attentions then had to run the gauntlet of house martins hawking overhead. Dozens of herring gulls loafed by the boating lake while a few mallards and mute swans drifted about.

Herring gulls

Sea holly

The sea hollies were coming into flower. Meadow pipits, house sparrows, starlings and linnets fussed about, eager to see if anything had been kicked up by the Army training team on a route march across the dunes.

Starling

Crosby Beach

It was a sunny Summer lunchtime and it was a toss-up whether there were more house martins than carrion crows on the beach. Just a handful of herring gulls and a cormorant flew by, it's that time of year.

It was raining in North Wales 

The lack of crowd scenes on the beach contrasted with the crowds on Seaforth Nature Reserve as I looked at it through the fence. Much to the disgust of the carrion crows lined up sitting on the fence. I'm entirely capable of walking past a crow without molesting it but they weren't convinced. Shelducks dozed on the close-cropped grass as rabbits did some more cropping. There were more shelducks on the pools, dabbling in the company of lapwings and a handful of redshanks. Oystercatchers were roosting on the big island, crowding out Canada geese, cormorants and herring gulls. It was pure luck that I caught the black-and-white wing and tail patterns of a few black-tailed godwits as they protested at being jostled off balance.

As always this time of year the tern colony provided most of the noise. As far as I could see they were all common terns, at this distance I would struggle to honestly pick out any arctic terns. A few dark, short-tailed terns caught my eye but were quickly identified as second calendar year common terns, the brown immature feathers on the back and wings catching my eye. And then I saw something different: a significantly whiter tern than the others with a stretched out look to the bill and wings. Was this a roseate tern? I decided I'd best make sure I wasn't stringing myself along by having a look at something else then coming back and seeing if the bird still stood out in the crowd. I couldn't find any dunlins amongst the waders on the island. I could, however, immediately find the tern as it swooped and banked in the midst of common terns its long tail steamers standing out from the crowd. I was very made up by the discovery. As if that wasn't surprise enough, a Cetti's warbler started singing from the bit of rank vegetation just over the bankside.

The nature reserve by the sailing club
A lot of hemlock water dropwort

I wandered down to the lake, which was busy with what looked like a school trip, and round to the little nature reserve by the sailing club. I would expect a singing Cetti's warbler here, I've often heard one. Today I heard two. A chiffchaff and a whitethroat also sang and titmice in stealth mode bustled through the undergrowth. Just outside the reserve the grass by the car park was littered with Southern marsh orchids.

Southern marsh orchid 

The bracing sea air had done me a world of good and would have continued doing so had I taken a route back into town that didn't pass lines of privet hedges in full bloom. 

I wasn't sure where I wanted to go next. I wasn't sure I wanted to go anywhere at all but it was still only lunchtime and I'd paid for my travel card. I had best part of an hour to wait for the next bus to Lunt and I didn't fancy hanging round that long. I got on the train and decided I didn't have the energy for the trawl up to Formby Point from either of the stations. And I didn't think the Alt Estuary at Hightown would be very productive, it would be a different matter next month. I really should have a walk across Ainsdale Dunes I told myself as the train left Ainsdale Station. So I ended up in Southport. I'd just missed the 44 and the 15 so I headed for the marine lake. And got as far as a coffee shop where, after a pastie and a pot of tea, I had to concede that I was done. Not by any means gracefully but concede it I did. Sometimes reality reminds me I'm not Peter Pan.