Crowd scenes

Purple sandpiper

I looked at the wrather forecast last night and concluded I'd be best off heading towards Merseyside if I wanted to avoid the worst of the weather. The weather forecast of nine o'clock was rather different to that of midnight but I thought what the heck and set off, armed with my old man's day explorer. I started having other ideas as the sky went black over Widnes but by the time we were getting into Liverpool there was the suspicion of blue in the sky so I stuck to the original plan.

Which was good because by lunchtime it was bright and sunny in New Brighton, if ferociously windy.

New Brighton Lighthouse, Port of Liverpool Docks in the background

It was a high high tide. I spent a short while doing a bit of seawatching. It was too choppy to hope to see anything sitting on the water. Gulls — lesser black-backs and herring gulls — towered over the waves and a cormorant made heavy weather of flying into the wind. Most of the black-headed gulls were either on the grass by the promenade or sitting on lampposts in Morrisons' car park.

New Brighton marine lake, the wader roost is on the pontoons at the left

I'd come to check out the wader roost on the pontoons on the marine lake. As hoped there was a lot of redshanks and turnstones. There seemed a lot of space on the pontoons, I couldn't work out whether there were less of them than usual or just more jam-packed than usual. It didn't take long to work out they were more jam-packed than usual. Every so often a redshank would overbalance in the wind and a ripple of annoyance would shiver through the flock.

A few dozen dunlins dozed on the margins and five purple sandpipers dozed on the margins of the dunlins. 

This is easily the most accessible wader roost I know of. I had a big tea planned for when I got home so I didn't stop for a pizza, confining myself to taking rather a lot of photos.

Dunlins, turnstones and redshanks

Redshanks

Dunlins and purple sandpiper

Redshanks, dunlins and turnstones

Redshanks and turnstones

Turnstones and dunlins

Redshanks, dunlins and turnstones

Black-headed gull, redshanks and turnstones

After a while I noticed the clouds being blown in were starting to look ominous so, after stopping off for a nosy in the second-hand bookshop across the road from the station, I set off back home the long way via Chester. I finally got the first fieldfares of the Winter when we passed a flock in some sycamores just outside Helsby.