Wirral

Goosander, West Kirby 

It was a dull, grey, mizzly sort of a day so I went to the seaside.

A black redstart's been bobbing about Meols the past few days so I thought I'd look out for that as well as catching up with a few waders. A report this morning had it on a rooftop near Meols Station so I decided I'd get off there, see if I could spot the redstart then wander along the prom to Leasowe Lighthouse and see what was around before moving on to someplace else. I particularly wanted to get a lot of walking in today because the past few days the leg joints have been Hell and the stiffness needs walking out.

I got off at Meols and glanced over to the anglers' lodge next to the station, expecting the usual square root of nothing at all. The three cormorants cruising about can't have been popular with the anglers over the other side.

Meols was filled with singing robins, woodpigeons, great tits and blackbirds. Goldfinches twittered about, spadgers chunnered in gardens, herring gulls flew overhead and I couldn't see any likely candidate for a black redstart. Which saved me the embarrassment of staring intently at somebody's rooftop while wishing I didn't have to leave the binoculars in the bag. It's not unreasonable to think a black redstart might be around here, in Germany they call them house redstarts, to differentiate them from the common garden redstarts. The first ones I ever saw were nesting in a derelict mill, long since gentrified, in Manchester City Centre.

Meols beach at noon

The walk down to the prom wasn't as long as I remembered, then I realised I'm usually doing this stretch of the walk after walking over from Wallasey or Leasowe. The tide was incoming but still low with big stretches of exposed mud for the hordes of redshanks, knots and oystercatchers and the supporting cast of herring gulls, black-tailed godwits, curlews, shelducks and turnstones. A few pied wagtails skittered about the seawall with the turnstones. It was an age before I found any dunlins in the crowds and there weren't many of them. I found a distant greenshank before I found any of the dunlins. I hadn't quite appreciated just how dismal the light was until I saw the settings the camera was offering me when I started taking photographs. It was a day of perpetual twilight.

Redshank

Turnstones 

Turnstones 

Cormorants 

I walked along the revetment to the groyne, checking the grassy bank every so often, just in case the black redstart had come this way. (It did, but I didn't see it, it was reported in the area where the prom meets the revetment about an hour after I passed that way.)  Robins sang and pied wagtails bounced about but they were the only small songbirds I was seeing.

Walking to the groyne

Just past the groyne I bumped into some pied wagtails fly-catching on the revetment wall. One made me look more than twice, it was a male with a significantly paler grey back and sides to the other male in the group but not nearly anything like the clean silver grey of a white wagtail. My rule of thumb is that if I'm getting a good side-on view and can't be sure it's a white wagtail within ten seconds then it's a pied wagtail. 

Pied wagtail 
A pale individual but I don't think pale enough to be a white wagtail. 

Pied wagtail
An extremely dark bird, no question about him.

Incoming tide at the groyne

Looking over to Wallasey and Liverpool 

Beyond the groyne the tide was rushing in despite its being more than an hour to high tide. Scores of oystercatchers huddled on receding mudbanks until the water reached their ankles before flying off into the Dee Estuary. The herring gulls and lesser black-backs waited until the sea floated them off; a few flew inland to join their fellows on the industrial estate, most were content to loaf on the water.

Blackthorn 

I climbed up the revetment and dropped down into Leasowe Common where a Cetti's warbler singing in the reeds by the pond was competing with the combined efforts of the robins and greenfinches in the trees. Chiffchaffs bounced through the willows in the company of long-tailed tits and great tits and a couple assayed a bit of song. Half a dozen mallards appeared and disappeared like magic into the reeds while moorhens played peekaboo in the margins. 

Carrion crows
It's not just the waders come inland for the high tide roost.

I'd been hearing redwings but it wasn't until I was walking past the paddock by Lingham Lane I saw any. A mixed flock of thrushes was busy in one corner, equal numbers of redwings and blackbirds with a couple of song thrushes. One of the redwings was darker than the others, I first saw it front-on and almost mistook it for another song thrush the spotting on its underpants being so dense and the background colour an orange shade of buff. This was a bird from Iceland, the subspecies coburni. It's been a couple of years since I've identified one, I've never knowingly seen groups of them though that's probably my lack of fieldcraft rather than a lack of Icelandic redwings.

Much to my surprise, the singing greenfinches, goldfinches and dunnocks singing by the lighthouse were joined by another Cetti's warbler.

Oystercatchers, curlews and black-tailed godwits shared Kerr's Field with teals, woodpigeons and pied wagtails. I had a good look round just in case my first wheatear of the year was about. No wheatear but I found another mid-grey male pied wagtail to puzzle over. It'll be a couple of weeks before these fields become a magnet for passage migrants. I had a quick look at the last field before the drain and found some more oystercatchers, woodpigeons and pied wagtails. And my first silvery-backed male pied wagtail of the year.

I got the train from Moreton to Manor Road and walked down to the lifeboat station. If the tide was coming in it should be pushing waders into the salt marsh close to the promenade. The tide may have been in according to the tide tables, it looked like it had no intention of doing so on the ground. It lapped the mud a hundred yards out and couldn't wait to run away again. I watched the distant shelducks, redshanks and curlews in the gloom and the little egret rummaging about in the marsh and pondered the complete lack of linnets or pipits out there. All the pied wagtails were following the lawn mower on Parade Gardens.

Hoylake Beach

It was a shorter walk to the bus stop than the station and the bus to West Kirby was due in a few minutes so I got that. (The Saveaway I'd bought includes both bus and rail.) I got myself a cup of tea and a pastie and sat by the marine lake for a bit before having the walk around it.

West Kirby Marine Lake, Little Eye and Hilbre on the horizon

There were fewer turnstones and redshanks about the promenade than on my last visit but the tide was very quickly on the ebb this time, they had a lot of estuary to play on. A mute swan cygnet, nearly all moulted white now, loafed by the jetty with a bunch of black-headed gulls. The herring gulls around the marine lake were busy picking mussels and cracking them on the path by dropping them from a height. They were careful not to go high enough for another gull to be able to swoop in a grab the prize before they could.

Dee Estuary 

I left attempting the identification of the distant waders until I was walking the seaward path, the cormorants and brent geese were easy enough to pick out though. The lake was fairly quiet, the only ducks being a pair of goosanders and a goldeneye over the way and a pair of mallards dabbling by the boatyard.

Redshanks, knots and oystercatchers 

There were masses of redshanks and oystercatchers on the estuary and they were making plenty of noise as they set about feeding. The high tide was but a memory and most of the waders smaller than a redshank were unidentifiable dots in the gloom. Mercifully for my morale a handful of dunlins skittered about the mud near the path.

Dunlin

North Wales 

Dee Estuary on the left, marine lake on the right

A dark band of birds followed the retreating tide to the channel of the Dee. Most were oystercatchers with redshanks tagging along behind. I almost missed the two grey plovers dashing about the crowd, it was the sudden darts and stops that put me onto them. The distant sound of ancient tramp steamers was provided by the scores of brent geese grazing on seaweed-covered rocks.

Goosander

The pair of goosanders very obligingly stayed on this side of the lake and came quite close to the path as they were fishing. The goldeneye turned out to be a pair of goldeneyes.

Goosanders

Goosander

Goldeneyes 

I was halfway round the lake when I realised the joints had stopped hurting and I was walking freely. Job done in more sense than one. I completed the walk and got the next train back to Liverpool. Unfortunately I just missed the direct train home. It was now that stupid couple of hours where Northern provides trains between Liverpool and Warrington and Manchester and Warrington that don't get into Warrington until the connecting service has left. I hung around for the Cleethorpes train, got off at Urmston then got the next train to Oxford Road and stayed on to get back home, like you have to. The journey back made a longer day of it than it already was but I wasn't going to let it spoil a surprisingly good day out.

West Kirby Marine Lake 

Wellacre Country Park

Stonechat

It was a cool, grey February morning but the breaking buds and birdsong were saying otherwise. This is the start of that time of year where the birdwatching becomes a bit easier because so much is shouting: "Here I am!" and you wonder if it has been wantonly overlooked all Winter. A case in point was the goldcrest singing in a garden conifer I passed on the way to the shop for a loaf of bread. Another passed through the back garden while I was refilling the bird feeders after some less than subtle Paddington Bear hard staring through the living room window by the spadgers. I'm old enough for all this to feel a bit early but it seems to be the new normal.

I thought I'd be at get some exercise to make sure the creaking limbs don't set completely so I got the bus into Flixton and had a slow dawdle round Wellacre Country Park.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Wood was muddy underfoot and the usual fleeting shades amongst the leaves and twigs announced themselves as songbirds. A great tit sang lustily over the noises of a hard-fought football match on the school pitch and was answered by a coal tit singing from the highest bough on one of the alder trees. Wrens and dunnocks sang in the undergrowth, song thrushes and woodpigeons from tall trees and greenfinches from hawthorn bushes in the fields. A pair of ring-necked parakeets chased each other to Irlam Locks and back.

Pied wagtail fly-catching in mid-air

The horses had been moved into the field by the wood and were accompanied by the usual bunch of magpies and pied wagtails. It was a chance to get a closer look at the way the wagtails use the horses. One particularly effective strategy was to linger round the back end of a horse and wait for it to swish its tail when bothered by flies. The flies, if not stunned, were slowed down and made easy targets for quick fly-catching dashes by the wagtails. A couple of the female wagtails had surprisingly pale grey backs but their smutty dark grey flanks easily marked them as pied wagtails not white. It's a bit early for them to be passing through but these days you can't use the calendar to predict passage migration.

Pied wagtail fly-catching 

Stonechat

The "dunnock" I thought was bouncing about the hedgerow on Jack Lane turned out to be a female stonechat. I looked in vain for an accompanying male. One of the house sparrows resident in the hedge took against the stonechat and chased it into the tree on the other side of the lane. The stonechat decided to stay on that side of the lane, where the sparrows were a bit more laid-back.

House sparrow
Looking proud of herself for having chased the stonechat off her bit of fence.

Looking over towards Irlam Locks a dozen or so black-headed gulls made a racket about the water treatment works while a line of sixteen cormorants flew downstream towards the confluence with the Mersey.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

The entrance to Jack Lane Nature Reserve looked as if a regiment had walked it. Once past the gate the path was fine, though. A song thrush sang in one of the trees by the reedbeds while robins, dunnocks and wrens sang in the bushes. Moorhens fidgeted in the reeds and a water rail gave a series of blood-curdling squeals invisibly from the depths of the reedbed.

Parmelia, I think

Walking by the railway to Dutton's Pond 

The trees by the path beside the railway were quietly busy with titmice and singing goldcrests. The trees over the other side of the reedbed behind them held a bubbling hubbub of redwings and starlings.

Dutton's Pond was gently placid. The mallards quietly cruised about, magpies and moorhens quietly rummaged about on the banks and even the coots were having a calm moment.

Dutton's Pond 

Green Hill

The titmice were busy in the trees at the base of Green Hill but I drew another blank looking for any willow tits. It's a while since I've seen any either side of the railway line. A small flock of siskins in the alders was a bit of compensation, as was the singing chiffchaff in the hawthorns on the open slope. A great spotted woodpecker flew over from the railway to the trees by the stables, a jay flew from the stables to the railway embankment, which seemed a fair swap. I drew another blank looking for the usual buzzard here. 

Green Hill 

I drew another blank walking over to Carrington Road for the bus home: there wasn't a single bird on the river. The woodpigeons and carrion crows in the trees and fields made up the numbers and the singing robins, greenfinches and blackbirds confirmed the overall feel of the day that despite the weather, Spring is sprung.

Lazy Friday

Blue tit, Leighton Moss 

Quite what the blackbird was about, starting singing at half three in the morning, but he gave it a good hour before realising he'd set his clock wrong. It won't be long now until the dawn chorus becomes a set feature of the day.

The change in the weather has affected the joints and I've been sleeping badly lately anyway so I wasn't up for anything energetic or strenuous today. I've got a pile of compensatory return train tickets to use up so I decided to employ one on a train ride out to Barrow, have a short fossick round the local park then call in on Leighton Moss on the way back. I'm very aware that I'm short-changing Leighton Moss lately and I intend to make a day of it later in Spring. I was also aware there were a couple of long-tailed ducks at Hodbarrow but with the maintenance work on the Carlisle line it's extremely difficult to make the connections: the train as far as Corkicle leaves just before the Manchester train arrives and it runs every couple of hours. Extremely difficult but not impossible, I might revisit this when the get up and go hasn't got up and gone.

The train journey up was fine. Woodpigeons abounded at the trackside, along with carrion crows, magpies and jackdaws. Black-headed gulls no longer lingered in town centres, herring gulls only became a feature after Preston, rookeries were busy and the sparrows were nesting again in that roof by Chorley Station.

The pools by the coastal hides at Leighton Moss were busy with black-headed gulls. Wigeons, black-tailed godwits and teal littered the pool by the Eric Morecambe Hide, mute swans cruised, little egrets loafed and there was much else I couldn't register as the train went by.

The Kent at Arnside was quiet, the salt marshes on the other side were busy. Teals dabbled in pools, curlews roosted, carrion crows and black-headed gulls rummaged about, little egrets skulked in creeks, shelducks dabbled on the shores. As the train crossed the Leven the oystercatchers outnumbered the wigeons two to one and there was still no sign of any eiders. The rookeries of Cumbria were as bustling as those of Lancashire but there were far more herring gulls about and many looked like they'd chosen their rooftop nesting places.

The herring gulls of Barrow Station were a little camera shy

Barrow Station was very busy with herring gulls and lesser black-backs. I had forty minutes to wait for the train back to Silverdale so I ambled round the corner to Barrow Park. 

Barrow Park 

It's a nice walk, even on a cool and grey day, and the usual array of urban park bird life was making itself known. Blackbirds and robins fussed about in borders; goldfinches, woodpigeons and collared doves sang; I didn't really have the time for the walk down to the ponds and to be honest the knees were complaining about the steps down from the war memorial so I toddled back to the station for the ten-minute wait for the train.

Walking down from the war memorial 

Dunnock

At Leighton Moss I went straight to the Hideout to see what was on the feeders. A crowd of chaffinches almost monopolised the feeders, even the greenfinches got crowded out most of the time. A pair of marsh tits kept striking picturesque poses in a blackthorn bush but were resolutely against having their photos taken. Some of the other small birds were a bit more obliging.

Coal tit

Chaffinch

Blue tit

Chaffinch

I wandered over to Lilian's Hide where the black-headed gulls were in a noisy mood. In striking contrast to my last few visits not a duck was loafing on the near bank. A raft of tufted ducks mingled with a few pochards and a drake goldeneye over the far side. Coots, moorhens and teals bimbled about the reed edges. Half a dozen snipe slept by the reeds near the hide. A jack snipe had been reported earlier but I couldn't see it here. Four marsh harriers floated over the reeds, two males and two females but not convincingly two pairs. One of the males circled high up into the air but didn't indulge in the hoped-for bit of skydancing.

At Lilian's Hide 

Dawdling back to the visitor centre 

I dawdled back to the visitor centre and thence to the station for the train back, stopping by the car park to watch a pair of carrion crows rush a buzzard out of their territory. The journey back was good and I got home ready for a pot of tea and a chip butty after somehow accumulating fifty-odd species on the day's tally.

Woolston Eyes

Snipe

It was the last scheduled bright Spring day and I was as unsure what to do with it as I had been on Tuesday. By lunchtime I was so sick of my indecision I got the train with no idea where I was going and it was only when I heard myself ask the guard for a single to Padgate I realised I was going to Woolston Eyes.

Woolston Brook

I got off at Padgate, walked down to Woolston Brook and thence to the New Cut. Spring was in the air: robins, dunnocks, song thrushes and great tits sang in the gardens and hedgerows and the woodpigeons were being frisky in the trees. Chaffinches were singing along the brook and it occurred to me that if today's intent was to see lots of long-tailed tits to make up for not having seen any for a couple of days I wasn't doing an awful job of it.

New Cut

I persist in the notion that the New Cut should be the haunt of willow tits even though today drew another blank. Great tits, blue tits and long-tailed tits bounced through the drowned willows and wayside bushes. There were woodpigeons, magpies and robins galore and moorhens fussed about in the cut. A pair of collared doves disputed possession of one of the willows with a squirrel determined to have a rummage about in the canopy. Looking straight up the trail the shapes zipping across the path at irregular intervals were blackbirds and squirrels. One pair of male blackbirds were so intent on having a fight they bundled into me without a word of apology.

Collared dove

Grey Mist

A pair of mute swans cruised about Grey Mist. There were a lot of anglers on today so the coots were being heard and not seen.

River Mersey, Woolston Weir

At Woolston Weir I checked out all the tufted ducks just in case the scaup and lesser scaup that had spent February between Grappenhall and Lymm had come this way. All the tufties were tufties. There weren't many mallards about and both the teals and gadwalls were hugging the banks. A pair of great crested grebes were noisy, a pair of Canada geese were very quiet in the reeds.

Pochards

I crossed the weir and climbed up to the path above the river. Looking down I could see a raft of pochards, all drakes, drifting downstream while the ducks hung back amongst the tufted ducks and black-headed gulls. There were a few teal about, a lot more mallards, and as the river slowed down for the sharp bend shovelers could be seen dabbling amongst the willows. There was a chorus of disgruntled quacks as a pair of buzzards wheeled over the river but this died down once it became apparent the buzzards had their own business to attend to and they danced in circles upstream beyond the weir.

Buzzards

Tufted duck
I keep thinking I'm done with tufted duck pictures then they go and look photogenic in the sunlight.

Pochards, black-headed gull and great crested grebe

The path above the river, which is in the steep drop to the right

Up top robins, great tits and wrens sang, Cetti's warblers sang from hidden locations at the waterside. A chiffchaff was torn between fly-catching and singing from the same branch in the same tree I was watching one do the same last Spring.

Cormorant

The path dropped down and met the Ship Canal, and yes, I checked the tufted ducks here too. Cormorants struck backlit poses on bits of old jetties and yet more long-tailed tits bounced through the trees.

The path to the bridge to No.3 Bed 

I turned into the path for the bridge onto the nature reserve on No.3 Bed (I have my permit and key). Up till now I'd been walking with the sun in my eyes and struggling to photograph birds either strongly backlit or subject to very high contrast model lighting. Now that I would be having the light behind me the clouds started rolling in. I unlocked the gate, locked it after myself (a feat in itself, it's a big padlock in a thin gap in the fence and I live in dread of dropping the key, luckily the river's not very deep, it only comes halfway up the ducks) and crossed the bridge. There was a muttered chorus from the tufted ducks under the bridge and a heron perched on a tree in the corner. In the time it took for me to cross the bridge the weather had changed from cloudy but bright to grey and ominously gloomy.

Tufted ducks

Grey heron and coot

From the Sybil Hogg Hide

A quick look over the bed from the first couple of hides took in dozens of gadwalls, shovelers, coots and mallards and most of them paired up. I couldn't work out if the pochards were paired up or not. If they were pairs they were apparently making an effort to not look like it, keeping their distance and not swimming side by side like the other ducks. Pairs of Canada geese and greylags loudly broadcast their locations just in case having a pair of big geese on a small reedy island or a bare nesting raft wasn't obvious enough.

I walked round to the Morgan Hide. The hedges were busy with titmice and chaffinches, the trees and bushes in the meadows were heaving with chaffinches and greenfinches, there were scores of them. The goldfinches and bullfinches feeding in the hawthorn bushes were vastly outnumbered.

Not today 

Along the way I decided I wasn't going to climb up to the shipping container hide. I wasn't sure if I distrusted my knees more on the climb or the descent. Either way, prudence said no.

From the Morgan Hide 

The Morgan Hide overlooks an array of nesting rafts. A few black-headed gulls and Canada geese were showing an interest. A lesser black-back settled itself down in what is likely to become its favoured Summer eaterie. Snipe and teal fussed about on the muddy banks. For some reason a lapwing taking a proprietorial interest in one of the rafts took a dislike to one of the snipe, repeatedly flying over to chase it off the mud before returning to its raft. The snipe would fly back, join its mates, start digging for worms and the lapwing would fly over and have another go at it. I've no idea what that snipe had done to provoke it, they never strike me as being particularly mischievous.

Snipe

Snipe and teals

Snipe

A pair of great crested grebes cruised about the open water in between not-pairs-honestly of pochards. The dabchicks I'd been hearing for ages finally emerged from the reeds and started fishing in the open water. My first black-necked grebe of the year, Winter colours not yet fully lost, drifted in stage left and started fishing in the same area.

Black-necked grebe

It had started raining. I took the hint and made tracks. The meadow was still frantic with finches, the hedgerows busy with titmice. I crossed the bridge and followed the path round to Thelwall Lane. Google maps told me I was going to miss the next bus to Altrincham by four minutes and not for the first time I wondered how the ferry across the canal works. I can only think it's a one-way journey, there's no obvious means of contact from this side of the canal. So I scuttled over the locks and somehow had a five-minute wait for the number 5 bus, which took me to Altrincham whence I got a bus home.

Despite the rain at the end of the afternoon it had been a good walk and good birdwatching. I must thank myself for the surprise.