Marshside

Pintails, teal and shovelers

The cat woke me up abominably early wanting to be fed and let out so I let her out and wondered whether to take advantage of the early start to go off on the adventure I keep planning or try to catch up on my sleep, which is why I set the stall out for the day by badly oversleeping.

I fed the cat and got the lunchtime train into Manchester and set off for Southport with a view to spending the afternoon wandering round Marshside and Crossens.

I got the Barrow train to Wigan, along the way passing a field ridiculously busy with pheasants on Astley Moss. 

As the Southport train stopped at New Lane it put up the winter thrushes that I didn't see there on Monday. Twenty-something fieldfares chattered up from the leek field, scattering a load of sparrows, linnets and goldfinches in the process. A couple of hundred pink-footed geese were feeding in one of the fields approaching Bescar Lane. Further confirmation of the onset of Winter, besides the leaden clouds, were the ducks dabbling in the railside sluices and ditches between Bescar Lane and Meols Cop. They were nearly all mallards with a few teal, a lot more ducks will be joining them by month's end.

At Southport I got the 44 bus to Marshside that I usually just miss. I got off and walked down Marshside Road, noting the dozen greylags feeding on the school football field.

Before I got properly into having a good look at Marshside I got distracted by some urgent business I needed to sort out on the 'phone which left me quite a lot frazzled by the time it got done and dusted so I didn't make a terribly good job of the next hour and a half's birdwatching.

Anyway…

There was quite a contrast between the fields either side of the road. On my right the birds were distant and dispersed, a few little egrets, a couple of curlew, perhaps thirty each of Canada geese and pink-feet. On my left the field was full of wigeons, mallards and Canada geese, there was a handful of curlews and pintails could be seen craning their necks over the furrows by the Junction Pool. Greylags flew in from the salt marsh, it looked like most of the pink-feet were staying out there for the time being.

Shovelers

Looking at the Junction Pool today you wouldn't think it had been bone dry not so long ago. It was stiff with shovelers and pintails, with a couple of tufted ducks finding enough depth to feed in. A couple of dozen black-tailed godwits and fifty-odd lapwings preened at the water's edge, there were hundreds more of both in the field further on.

Mostly lapwings

A glossy ibis had been reported as being seen between the Junction Pool and Nel's Hide so I approached the Halfway Lookout screen with a bit of optimism. Lots more shovelers, pintails, wigeons and mallard but no ibis. Nil desp., there was a promising looking dark blob in the mass of lapwings halfway between Nel's Hide and Hesketh Road.

An elder bush and a spindle tree, Nel's Hide

I arrived at Nel's Hide where my spirits were dampened by the shrubs by the hide having been either slashed down completely or half-slashed, half-lain as a hedge. Someone said to me recently that: "Conservationists hate scrub." I disagreed with him at the time, and still do, but I can see how the impression is made.

Shelduck

There were plenty of teal and shelduck amongst the other ducks on the pool in front of Nel's. It was very hard to imagine this had been a cracked, hard landscape. The glossy ibis was recognisable as such, distant but at least for once not either asleep or up to its eyelids in tall grass. The chap who I was sharing the hide with let me have a dekko through his telescope (thank you, sir) and the bird promptly stuck its beak in its back feathers and went to sleep.

I really wasn't in the mood to retrace my steps and walk down to Crossens. Instead, I crossed the road and walked down Marine Drive in the hopes of getting a better view along here over the bank. I was unlucky: the ibis was asleep on the bit of ground hidden by the high bit of bank halfway along. It wasn't all bad news: something disturbed the lapwings so they spent five minutes wheeling round the marsh disturbing the other waders every time they took flight, which gave me the chance to spot a few ruffs and golden plovers amongst the masses.

Southport pier from the corner of Hesketh Road

A few little egrets and carrion crows flew low around the salt marsh and a couple of small family groups of pink-feet flew up a few hundred yards then settled back down to feed.

The ibis was an even more distant dark shape in the gloom from the seat on the corner of Hesketh Road. I could just pick out a few golden plovers among the hundred or so black-tailed godwits. Closer by there were a couple of hundred wigeon feeding in the grass and a couple of dozen pintails flew in to join the score of shovelers on the pool by the Hesketh Road platform.

Mostly wigeon and pintails

Although it felt an unsatisfactory afternoon's birding I'd actually seen fifty-two species of birds while I'd been out which is pretty good going. I'll have to come back over next week and do the place justice.