New Brighton

Purple sandpiper

A sunny day with a light wind and a low tide isn't ideal conditions for trying to find Leach's petrels at New Brighton but I thought I'd give it a go anyway, I might strike lucky with a distant view of one out in the estuary and if you don't look you don't see. By the time I arrived at New Brighton it had become a bright sunny Summer's day and what wind there was had largely dropped, so no I didn't see one.

The marine lake is still kitted out for Summer holiday fun with zip wires and big inflatables all over the water so it was no surprise to see no birds on there. So I had a long nosy round the lighthouse with a flock of starlings in its superstructure providing musical accompaniment.

One of the gobies in the rock pools

Black-headed gull

There were plenty of gulls on the beach, equal numbers of herring, lesser black-backed and black-headed gulls. I'd expect to see some common gulls but none were around here today. I've noticed they've been thin on the ground at home, too.

I was surprised to see so many gobies in the rock pools by the fort. Especially given how many gulls there were on the beach.

New Brighton lighthouse

I walked down to the sea, trying to ignore the bloke playing with his quad bike on his lunchtime break. Every so often he'd scare up the flock of turnstones loafing and feeding on the sea defences. A couple of redshanks that he spooked flew around a bit, landed by the lighthouse and fussed around for a couple of minutes before flying off completely. A bird which was either a greenshank or a spotted redshank disappeared and never came back.

Turnstones

Turnstone

The turnstones settled back onto the sea defences, squabbling and calling all the while. They were between me and the sun which made the light a bit challenging. Turnstones are usually very easy to identify on silhouette but a lot of these needed a second glance as they'd moulted most of their head feathers, giving them an oddly pin-headed look.

Purple sandpipers and turnstone
The sandpiper on the left seems to have a long bill because it's sticking its tongue out at the photographer.

A couple of birds were slightly smaller and rounder. They puzzled me for a few minutes until I realised they were purple sandpipers still largely in their Summer colours. I've never seen them this early in the year and they came as a surprise. It's only the second time I've seen this plumage so I took a long time to feel confident in the identification.

Canada Dock from New Brighton

I walked back to the promenade and decided to walk down to the lifeguard station at the other end. There were more of the same gulls on this stretch of the beach along with small groups of oystercatchers which mostly clustered at the water's edge. A little egret flew by and headed for the river.

Herring gulls

House sparrow on marram grass

Half a dozen swallows twitted from the telegraph wires by the lifeguard station and a small flock of spadgers worked their way through the marram grasses.

I joined the start of the Leasowe Revetment (a great word I only learned yesterday, I've often wondered what the thing was called) and walked down towards Wallasey Dunes. I hadn't walked far when I bumped into the first and only wheatear of the day.

Leasowe Lighthouse

The common gulls turned up on this stretch of beach. They and a few herring gulls were busy dropping cockles onto the concrete slope of the revetment. 

Common gull

I got as far as Wallasey Dunes and decided to call it quits for the day rather than continuing down to Leasowe. I wanted to get home to check on something that was worrying me (I was most of the way home when I found out there was nothing to worry about after all). It had been a good walk and the purple sandpipers brought the year list up to 181.