Lunt Meadows

Yesterday's plan was to bob over to Lunt Meadows to see if the two American golden plovers were still there, have a nosy round Roughley's Wood then get the train back to Kirkby from Waterloo, taking in a quick wander round Crosby Marine Lake and a look at Seaforth Nature Reserve through the wire fence. This involves eight trains and two buses and seeing as the first train out was so late I'd have to wait an hour for the second one I jacked it in and went for a walk over at Etherow Country Park. Being a natural optimist I tried again today.

Both birds were showing well, though quite distant so I've had to heavily crop copies of the pictures to show that the small pale thing amongst the lapwings is one or other of them. Never seen an adult American golden plover before, they reminded me more of grey than golden plovers.

Adult American golden plover and lapwings

Adult American golden plover and lapwing

Adult American golden plover and lapwings

Adult American golden plover and lapwings

American golden plover with lapwings and Canada geese

The Canada geese, greylags and lapwings were very flighty. possibly because of a buzzard that flew low overhead as I arrived.

Buzzard

The supporting cast included a common sandpiper, quite a lot of mallards and teal, a few shovelers and gadwall and a few dozen pink-footed geese flying low and landing in fields on the other side of the river.

Mallard

Pink-footed goose

Nice to still have a few dragonflies and butterflies about, too.

Common darter

Roughley's Wood was very quiet except for a small flock of goldfinches, a couple of pheasants and a lone chiffchaff.

Over at Crosby Marine Lake there were plenty of gulls about, mostly herring and black-headed, with a few lesser black-backs and common gulls added for luck. Also quite a few swallows and house martins hawking low over the small pool. Strangely, no meadow pipits or skylarks.

On the beach there were a few flocks of gulls loafing about while redshanks, dunlins and oystercatchers fed close to the water's edge together with a lone whimbrel. A small flock of linnets bounced around in the vegetation by the sea wall.

Linnet

Not much on the water at Seaforth Nature Reserve, though a large flock of waders — mostly black-tailed godwits and oystercatchers — nearly covered one of the islands. What we once would have thought as being a small flock of starlings were stripping the brambles of any ripe blackberries. A couple of dozen curlews were roosting with the Canada geese by the rabbit warrens but were scared off by the rather overly boisterous appearance of a raven.

Back home to a "What time do you call this then?" welcome from the cat.