Windswept and interesting

St. Anne's beach, Southport in the distance

The weather being cloudy and blustery called for a bit of seawatching. I've had Starr Gate on my radar for a while so I decided it was high time I had a visit there. The tide times weren't ideal but high enough to make it worthwhile.

The day started well with a bright morning after the night's wind and rain. The male coal tit visited the garden while I was getting ready to go out and I bumped into the female as she was feeding in one of the conifers by the station as I waited for the train. A meadow pipit flying overhead as I walked to the station was another Autumnal touch.

There was a bit of a setback involving my being reminded why I don't buy my tickets at Deansgate Station (it's been a few years since I last did it, I can be forgiven for forgetting). To compensate for having to hang around Preston Station for half an hour a flock of sixty-odd pink-footed geese flew low overhead. Anyway, I got to Squire's Gate for lunchtime in bright sunshine and had a five minute walk down the road to Starr Gate to meet a very stiff breeze.

Beach and dunes from Starr Gate

There was plenty of seating to choose from but very little pointing towards the sea. I spent a while sitting sideways at the end of a bench but the buffeting by the wind made it impossible to focus on fast-moving objects on the far horizon. In the end I propped myself against a railing and did as best could for an hour. I hadn't taken my telescope, I didn't know the terrain and didn't fancy lugging it over umpteen trains if I wasn't sure I'd be able to get the use of it. It would have been hard work getting a stable image with it today. A group of windsurfers were another complication but they were there before me so I can't crib.

A few herring gulls and lesser black-backs floated about on the beach and a few black-headed gulls and oystercatchers fed in the surf. An occasional cormorant flew close by but nearly all the action was far out near the horizon. A couple of herring gulls sat on the water for a few minutes but the sea was too choppy for their comfort and they soon flew off.

The Irish Sea, like a mill pond

Far out in the distance some of the dark shapes pitching and rolling in the wind turned out to be lesser black-backs and the occasional great black-back as the light caught their heads and undersides. Cormorants steamed purposefully into the wind. Just as I was thinking there wouldn't be much else I'd be able to see a group of half a dozen Manx shearwaters sheared the waters like it says on the tin. There was a lot I couldn't identify: small dots flying with the wind through the troughs of distant waves might have been auks of some kind but at that distance they could just as easily been scoters or eiders; something pale and graceful skittered across the horizon while a dark burly something loomed over it then disappeared over the horizon. The essence of seawatching is spending long periods looking for birds that probably aren't there interspersed with frustratingly short sightings of birds in the process of disappearing.

I was trying to work out whether the small black speck riding the wind low over the waves in the mid distance was my first Leach's petrel of the year when a windsurfer's sail got in the way and once it had moved the bird was gone. Frustrating but frankly I'd probably have lost it and added it to the mystery list anyway. Half an hour later I did manage to see one very slightly closer, a good enough sighting to be sure that if it wasn't a Leach's it was something considerably rarer so it must have been a Leach's.

Feeling a bit wind-battered I decided to walk down the beach and have a nosy round while the sun was still shining. More of the same gulls and a couple of carrion crows on the beach. I walked down to the water's edge, past what looked like a wreck of razor shells, and scanned the horizon awhile, seeing a few more gulls and cormorants and being entirely unable to hold the binoculars steady enough to recognise anything else.

Lytham Dunes and St. Anne's beach

I followed a path into the dunes and retreated quickly after a few minutes' being sandblasted. About half a mile further down the beach I found some paths that meandered through the marram grasses and over the more stable stretches of dune. Aside from a couple of magpies any birds that were about were keeping well undercover, every so often I'd hear a meadow pipit call from deep in the tussocks.

I walked down and back to the station in time to bump into a skylark flying overhead into Blackpool. I took a circuitous way home, meeting a dozen downpours of rain along the way.