Crosby

Female wheatear

I'm still playing catch-up with site visits so I decided today I'd have a wander round Crosby Marina and stare wistfully though the fence at Seaforth Nature Reserve, with the possibility of moving on to look over the fence at Lunt Meadows (it's currently closed but you can see some of the pools by the path by Roughley's Wood).

Crosby Marine Lake

It was a cool, blustery sort of day, just right for a walk by the Irish Sea. It was high tide so there were lots of herring gulls loafing on the grass by the marine lake. This time of year most of the waders have started to move on and what is still about will be roosting in the nature reserve away from dogs and people. The pied wagtails foraging in the grass were accompanied by half a dozen wheatears. A couple of skylarks sang and the clump of sea buckthorn near the dunes was occupied by a flock of house sparrows.

Second calendar year and adult herring gulls

It's a bit early for little gulls or black terns to be visiting on passage, though one little gull was reported earlier this week so I kept an optimistic eye out for one. A cloud of swallows and sand martins suggested there'll be rich pickings of insects waiting for them when they do turn up.

Little egrets

Out on the lake five little egrets lurked on the banks and a few black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs floated on the water. There were a couple of dark shapes far out in the water which took me a while to identify. The all-dark bird made me think common scoter but it was only when the light caught the pale cheeks of the other that I realised I was looking at a pair.

Crosby beach

The sea was fairly quiet of birds, just a few herring gulls and lesser black-backs with the odd subadult great black-back passing by and cormorants skimming over the water. I was hoping for terns by now. Ah well.

Looking through the fence at Seaforth Nature Reserve the most obvious birds were the shelducks either grazing on the grass or sitting on the banks of the pools with the only two Canada geese I saw on this visit and a lone black swan. Lots more herring gulls were loafing on the banks with a few cormorants and lesser black-backs. The only waders I could see were half a dozen black-tailed godwits and a pair of oystercatchers. A dark-looking duck asleep over by the hides remained a mystery: it was too big to be a female tufty but I couldn't see it well enough to tell if it was a female scaup. At that distance and with its head tucked into its back feathers it might just have been a particularly dark mallard with a bit of the farmyard in its background.

Male wheatear

It looked like I'd missed the passage of yellow wagtails though there were plenty of wheatears about.

The question of whether or not to nip over to Lunt Meadows was answered for me by the cancellation of the bus. It's an hourly service so I knocked the idea on the head.

I maxed out the value of my day saver tickets by going home via Southport and Clitheroe.