Marshside and Crossens

Pink-footed geese, teal and wigeon, Marshside

I've got a mild dose of that chest infection that's knocking about so I thought I'd nip over to Southport for the first visit of the year to Marshside. The idea being to get some fresh sea air and stay within five minutes' walk of a bus stop if necessary. As it was, volunteers working by the Junction Pool were having a smoky bonfire that a strong wind carried horizontally across the road so I decided to walk up to Crossens and get the bus from there. Bad light and birds keeping their distance made it a challenging day.

Walking down Marshside Road I was surprised by the size of the flock of geese on the school playing field: a hundred or more Canada geese, a few dozen greylags and a couple of curlew just for a change. The field on the reserve next to this was still flooded. Wigeon, teal, lapwings and curlew were scattered around close to the road, Canada geese and greylags with a few mute swans further out towards Nels Hide. The field on the right hand side of the road held more wigeon and curlew with small groups of mallard and a handful of little egrets.

There wasn't much to see from Sandgrounders aside from a handful of teal and a couple of shelduck.  Small flocks of black-headed gulls and greylags were keeping their distance. A kestrel hunting by the path to the hide was the only bird of prey I saw all day.

Walking down Marine Drive from the sand works I could see a few little egrets on the outer marsh and some wigeon on the small pools. In the distance a great white egret climbed out of a ditch, stretched its neck out for a quick look round and disappeared again. If something as big and white as a great white egret can lose itself into the background like that it's no wonder it can be difficult to pick up a flock of pink-footed geese that have disappeared into the distant reeds.

Wigeon, lapwings and golden plovers in the gloom, Crossens Inner

There weren't any golden plovers or black-tailed godwits on Marshside, possibly because of the work party. I'd started to think I wasn't going to have any luck on Crossens either until something I couldn't pick up flushed them into the air. There were perhaps a hundred of each, settling back onto the muddy stretch of Crossens Inner Marsh close to the water treatment works.

Amongst the black-headed and herring gulls were a few lesser black-backed gulls and a couple of great black-backed gulls. A gull standing by one of the ditches near the road caught my eye as being a bit odd. At first I thought it was a young great black-back but the bill was long rather than big and it wasn't anywhere near as hefty as a great-black back. Comparing it with a nearby adult lesser black-back it was slightly bigger, longer winged, longer necked and with a relatively smaller head. It took me a while to realise I was looking at a second Winter Caspian gull. I decided I needed a photo. The local traffic decided it was time to send a few lorries down the road between us. When the traffic cleared all the gulls had moved well back from the road and there was no point in trying to get a picture of a distant pale shape in poor light.

There were plenty of wigeon and teal near to the road on Crossens Outer Marsh but all the geese were pink-footed and were keeping their distance. Two water pipits had been reported here yesterday but pipits of any sort were completely lacking this afternoon.

Crossens Outer Marsh, with distant pink-footed geese and shelduck

And the trains back to Manchester were behaving themselves today.