Hale and home

Dunnock, Stretford

 I've been on a twitch. On a Saturday. Yes, really. On a whim I decided to go over to Hale in Merseyside to have a look for the juvenile Sabine's gull that's been there the past few days.

Starlings, Hale Lighthouse

Checking out the travel plan it looked very straightforward: train from my local station to Liverpool South Parkway and a 500 bus ride to Hale. And so it wasn't. I'd been waiting an hour and watched three 500 departures appear and disappear from the boarding screen when I asked a bus driver: "Is the 500 running today?" No. And not any day. I was less than entirely gruntled. Anyway, it turns out the journey is dead straightforward so long as you ignore the information provided by Merseytravel. An 86A to John Lennon Airport then an 82A to Hale Village Green.

I walked down Church End and down to the lighthouse. The field by the lighthouse was full of black-headed gulls, plus a few juvenile lesser black-backs, all following a tractor as it harrowed the freshly-manured ground. I checked them all out, just in case, but didn't see anything that might be a Sabine's.

Black-headed gulls, Hale

A couple of birders stopped and told me the gull was on the river and showing well so I joined the coastal path and walked down to where a small group were scanning the river. As I approached they all turned round and started looking at the field. The tractor driver had stopped for a break and the gulls that had been loafing on the shore flew in to join the ones I'd been watching earlier.

Scan as I might I had no joy. Most of the others moved back up the path to try their luck there, leaving two of us behind. Just as well, really as the gulls flew back our way and back onto the river. "Closest to us!" shouted the other chap. And he was right, there it was: my first Sabine's gull. A brief sight of it but unmistakable: small, smutty grey-brown back, browner wing coverts, jet black outer primaries and a ginormous triangle of white secondaries and inner primaries. Lovely.

I spent a while trying, and failing, to pick the bird up on the river. Walking back I had another look at the gulls from my original viewpoint. And lo and behold, distant but conspicuous, up bobbed the Sabine's again. A longer view this time before it settled back down on the field behind the black-headed gulls. A very nice bird.

The original plan had been to move on to another site for an hour or so's birding but after all the delays and whatnot I decided to call it quits and get off home.

Back home, pot of tea to hand, I was delighted to see yet another very young goldfinch on the feeder. It must have been very young as the parents were still prepared to feed it (give it a couple of days and it'll have to get its own meals). The goldfinches were joined by a dunnock and a robin, the robin feeding from one of the giant suet-filled pine cones and the dunnock picking up the bits from under the feeder.

Juvenile goldfinch, Stretford