One good tern…

Redshanks and turnstones

It was looking like being the last rain-free day of the week and there was a lunchtime high tide so I decided to go over to the Wirral to see what the sea would bring in. (To be honest, I was hoping for my first Sandwich tern of the year.)

I set off from Meols for Leasowe Lighthouse with the light and a strong wind behind me and an hour before high tide. There was plenty of exposed sand still on the beach, littered with loafing gulls, mostly black-headed and lesser black-backs with a lot of herring gulls scattered about far out near the water line. Curlews were dotted here and there across the beach and a hundred or more oystercatchers were busy working the soft mud around the creeks except the one where a small group of people were picking cockles. I could hear redshanks but it was only when I got to the end of the Parade that I could see them, a couple on the sand and then a couple of dozen of them on the creek nearest the sea wall. There was a flurry of movement and more redshanks emerged over the bank accompanied by a score of biggish sandpipers. At first I thought they were knots but then I started to have my doubts and it was only when I confirmed four toes in their footprints and one of the birds opened its wings to show a dark rump that I was convinced I was right in the first place. I'd be no bloody good identifying rare peeps.

Knots

Knot

Redshanks and knots (spot the dunlin!)

Redshanks, knots, lesser black-back and great black-back
If I were a knot I wouldn't be comfortable that close to the great black-back.

Redshank

I walked down the path towards the groyne as the tide drifted in. The herring gulls and oystercatchers flew in to the high parts of the beach by the Parade. By the time I got to the groyne the tide was lapping at the stones at its base and the redshanks and knots had flown in to take refuge. There was a grey plover at the very end of the groyne and a couple of ringed plovers perched like kings of the castle on top. A sudden flash of bright sandy brown caught my eye: a wheatear flew in, took a few minutes' breather then flew off low over the water, battling with the wind. I moved on a little and from the leeward side of the groyne I could see a dozen turnstones and a few dunlin. A yacht taking advantage of the rising tide sailed close to the groyne and brought all the redhanks up, gathering up a few turnstones and knots along the way. They circled the groyne a few times until they were sure the yacht was safely on its way.

Lesser black-back, redshank and knot

A plucky wheatear about to launch itself into the wind

Redshank, turnstone and kno

Redshank, turnstone and knot

I could hear a tern somewhere over the water. It took me a few minutes to find it and even then I only just caught it before it shot off into the wind. Just the one tern, and luckily for me it was a Sandwich tern.

I headed inland towards Leasowe Lighthouse. There were linnets about in the short grass, goldfinches twittered in the bushes and swallows hawked low over the ground.

Leasowe Lighthouse

Beside the path, at the wooded bit by the pool, a mixed tit flock worked its way through the willows, flew across the path into the stunted white poplars and back again. More than a dozen long-tailed tits, half a dozen great tits and at least as many blue tits, with a chiffchaff tagging along. I followed them to the pool, disturbing four moorhens on the water and a great spotted woodpecker that had been pecking about a dead branch. As I walked past the lighthouse I noticed a male kestrel was using the railing about the light as a look-out post.

Past Kerr's Field, which only hosted a brace of magpies and half a dozen black-headed gulls and on for the train at Moreton. While I was waiting for the train I noticed a report of a little stint at Marshside. I considered going for it, in fact if the Southport train had been the first or second train to come in at Moorfields Station I would have done even though there wouldn't have been much daylight left by the time I got there. As it was, I took the second train and maxed my day saver tickets by getting home by a circuitous route via Kirkby and Wigan.