Crossens and Marshside

Shelduck, Marshside

I had a toddle out to Southport the other day, got the bus out to Crossens then walked down to Marshside and got the bus back into Southport from Hesketh Park. I noticed that the sign at Crossens says that it's 4½ miles to Southport Station.

A really nice Winter's day, crisp and bright but with hardly any wind so it made for nice strolling weather. The tide was out so the geese were scattered across the salt marsh — for every pink-footed goose you could see in the well-cropped fields there would have been three or four with their heads down feeding in the long grass further out. There had been reports of both Russian and Greenland white-fronted geese, barnacle geese and a tundra bean goose. I managed to see just the bean goose and that only by one of those strokes of luck where as you're scanning a flock of a couple of hundred geese two of them happen to raise their heads and you realise one's a head taller than the other and needs a second look. There had also been reports of lots of raptors — merlin, peregrine and kestrel and both marsh and hen harriers. I didn't have much luck on that score, my worst on this patch, and just saw a kestrel and a marsh harrier and both fairly distant. Ah well, it gives me an incentive to go back for another go for pride's sake.

Still, a nice way to spend a few hours in Winter sunshine.

Wigeon, Crossens

Tufted duck, Marshside

It's only when you see a great black-back next to a goose that you realise what a huge brute they are.
No wonder the teal and lapwings were spooked every time one flew over the reserve.