The North Wirral: Leasowe to Meols

Sketch map: Meols, Moreton and Leasowe
(click to enlarge)

This stretch of the Wirral coast is well-served by public transport: the trains are every quarter of an hour and there are plenty of buses from elsewhere in Merseyside. It's well worth the visit for the walks just by themselves. From a birding perspective the mixture of grassy coastline, horse paddocks, little bits of thin woodland and a reed-fringed pond provides a variety of habitats to explore, particularly during Spring and Autumn when this area can be very busy with passage migrants.

Depending on what else I've got planned for the day I'll usually start from Leasowe Station or Moreton Station. From Leasowe Station you can join the Wirral Circular Trail about fifty yards down the road, just after the Premier Foods factory. From Moreton Station you join it about a hundred yards down the road at the entrance to Kerr's Field. (If you prefer you can walk down to the end of the road to get yourself a cup of tea and a chip butty). In Spring and Summer you'll usually see whitethroat as you walk along the stream (The Birket).

Kerr's Field is a paddock area by the stream that's often good for passage migrants. It's possible to see good numbers of wheatears, yellow wagtails and pied wagtails (a possible Iberian wagtail was reported from here recently).

Yellow wagtail, Kerr's Field

Wheatear, Kerr's Field

Juvenile stonechat, Kerr's Field

Of course, timing is everything when it comes to passage migration: a couple of weeks after seeing dozens of wagtails and wheatears here I came back and found just the one wheatear. Any disappointment I may have had soon evaporated when I noticed the resident stonechats had a few new mouths to feed.

In Spring a walk along the path past the lighthouse will be accompanied by the songs of warblers — mostly blackcaps and chiffchaffs, with one or two sedge warblers — and skylarks with the occasional "cronk" from a passing raven.

Leasowe Lighthouse

At the lighthouse you have the choice of going up for a walk along the sea wall for a bit of seawatching, directly following the path through Leasowe Common that eventually gets to Meols, or taking a diversion to the left and following the path into the reeds and trees and round the other side of the pond to add reed and willow warblers to the tally (this path rejoins the path a few hundred yards further along).

Leasowe Common

This spit of rocks is about halfway between Leasowe Lighthouse and Meols.
Most of the waders taking refuge here will usually be oystercatchers, redshanks and dunlin but you never know your luck.

Coming into Meols

Coming into Meols you can walk through the caravan park to join Park Lane and walk down to the station from there or you can carry on along the sea front then turn down Dovepoint Road and down to the station.

First-Winter pied wheatear, Meols sea wall, November 2018

If you've the energy you can carry on walking along the sea front down to Hoylake and thence to West Kirby.