Martin Mere-ish

Pink-footed goose, New Lane

I felt the need for wild geese. Southport being in Tier 2 and off-limits I decided on a wander around Martin Mere. I toyed with the idea of booking a visit to Martin Mere itself but as all the hides are closed I couldn't see I'd get enough out of a visit for it to be worth the hassle, so somebody else who wanted to have a look round the bird collection could have my go.

It was a bright sunny morning as I stood waiting for my train at Humphrey Park and I took it as a good omen when a carrion crow chased a buzzard over the station.

I changed trains at Wigan. It was only when I got on the train I realised I'd gone into autopilot and bought a ticket to Southport. I behaved myself and got off at New Lane as planned.

By New Lane Station

As the train approached New Lane we passed one field with more than a hundred black-headed gulls feeding in the mud and a field of stubble ankle-deep in woodpigeons. The lettuces in the field next to the station had run to seed and the train disturbed a cloud of chaffinches and linnets. Once the train had left the birds settled back down and disappeared completely in the vegetation. There were more black-headed gulls on the water treatment works, along with a big flock of starlings and a dozen pied wagtails.

The bright sunny morning lasted about thirty yards down the path alongside the railway line and was replaced by heavy gloomy clouds. More chaffinches and linnets flew between the hawthorns along the railway line and an abandoned field of beetroot, together with a couple of corn buntings and a skylark.

I crossed over the line and walked down the path that eventually goes round the perimeter of Martin Mere. It was dead quiet at first though distant clouds of pink-footed geese could be seen rising and falling on the horizon as they moved between fields near Curlew Lane. A couple more corn buntings bobbed up from the hay field and a reed bunting shot out of a hawthorn bush as I passed.

Pink-footed geese, Martin Mere

Pink-footed geese, Martin Mere

Pink-footed geese, Martin Mere

I got to the corner where the path meets the boundary of the reserve and looked over the gate. An island on one of the pools a couple of hundred yards away was busy with oystercatchers and lapwings feeding in the mud and further out there were more pink-feet, a few shelduck and a small herd of whooper swans. A male peregrine falcon was sat on a metal girder impaled in the island, an object of surprising indifference to the waders just in front of it. It might have just fed, I couldn't see any evidence of it from where I was standing. Or it could be that the waders were safe where they are: peregrines aren't pounce hunters, they need to get up a bit of steam to crash into their victims, perhaps the birds a few feet away are significantly safer than the ones a field away.

The path got progressively wetter until I got to a stretch that was shin-deep and gave me a chance to test how waterproof my boots are inside as well as out. So it started raining. A tit flock in the hedgerow was heard more than seen most of the way, it finally emerged near one of the hide screens and included a couple of goldcrests amongst the long-tailed tits in the rearguard. Far out over the reserve a marsh harrier flew low over the reeds and disturbed a group of shovelers.

Reedbed walk

By the time I got to the public part of the reedbed walk the rain had dialled down to a dull drizzle and the geese were getting noisier. I squelched along the path to Tarlscough Lane, disturbing a little egret and a flock of fieldfares in the process.

I walked down the road to Burscough Bridge Station, all the while pink-footed geese flying over from the fields over near Curlew Lane and onto fields next to the railway line. By this stage I'd spent a couple of hours scanning hundreds of geese on the off-chance of finding anything except pink-feet and I was getting pretty jaded. As I was passing Brandeth Barn a dozen geese passed over and I barely gave them a second glance until one of them called, deeper and harsher than the others and without the nasal echo of a greylag. The bird was slightly bigger and darker than the others, a tundra bean goose.

There were a hundred or so whooper swans feeding on the fields along Curlew Lane, bumping along with pink-feet and some less than overly successful scarecrows.

Pink-footed geese, Burscough

Past the bend on Red Cat Lane there were more geese on the field by the road, a mixture of greylags and pink-feet, and yet more pink-feet in the field between the stables and the houses on Cherry Grove. A couple of hundred very noisy garden birds!