Ribble

Red-crested pochard, Longton Brickcroft

The cat kicked me out of bed early so I decided to have the day out I had in mind the other day. I armed myself with an old man's explorer ticket, took the train to Preston and got the number 2 bus to Longton Brickcroft for stop one in the itinerary.

Red-crested pochard, Longton Brickcroft

The bus stops by the visitor centre at Longton Brickcroft. I walked through the car park to the South Pond and literally the second duck I saw was a very fine red-crested pochard. I'd seen one reported last week, it was nice to see it still hanging around. It was in the company of a flock of mallards but any time anyone came to feed the ducks it stayed well out in the water. It was obvious by its behaviour that it had learned there was food there for the having but it wasn't for going for it. There were also a few coots, moorhens and Canada geese and a pair each of mute swan and gadwall.

Longton Brickcroft South Pond

Longton Brickcroft Middle Pond

I'd bumped into the first mixed tit flock of the morning in the car park, a mixture of great, blue and coal tits. There were two more along the path past Middle Pond to North Pond, both mostly long-tailed, blue and great tits with an assortment of hangers-on. One had a treecreeper and a nuthatch and a pair of bullfinches, the other had half a dozen chaffinches in tow. I kept hearing but not seeing a goldcrest and it was pure luck I saw the reed bunting I could hear by one of the gardens. The robins and squirrels came to beg but sadly I was empty-handed. (I suspect the tiny tots on walks with their parents weren't.)

Cormorant, Longton Brickcroft

There were a few dozen mallards on the North Pond, the drakes all busy whistling and head-bobbing to impress the ladies. Further out there was a tufted duck and a pair of goosanders and a juvenile cormorant hung out to dry on a dead tree.

The bus is once an hour, which is about right for a walk around here. As it was, I could have lingered as it was quarter of an hour late.

Tree sparrow, Hesketh Bank

Next stop was Hesketh Out Marsh. The first skein of pink-footed geese flew overhead as we approached Tarleton. I got off the bus at the first stop on Shore Road in Hesketh Bank and walked down to the junction with Dib Road. It's a dead straight half mile walk down Dib Road to the car park at Hesketh Old Marsh. The hedgerows were busy with robins, blackbirds and wrens while linnets and meadow pipits twittered in the tree tops. A couple of dozen tree sparrows fussed about the farmyard by the Centre Drain.

A cloud of pink-footed geese, lapwings and black-tailed godwits rose from the distant marsh as I passed the shooting lodge. They'd been spooked by a low-flying light aircraft flying round from Blackpool. By the time I got to the car park the birds had headed off out into the estuary.

Lapwings, Hesketh Out Marsh

There was still plenty to see out on the marsh from the viewing platform. Wigeon and teals dabbled in the pools, redshanks and a couple of godwits fed in the water and lapwings loafed on the banks. I found a few mallards and a pair of shovelers and out in the far distance I could see a few pink-feet and a couple of family parties of Canada geese. A couple of blokes with scopes told me the plane had scared off a Richardson's cackling goose that had been with the pink-feet and a Todd's Canada goose that joined the flock for the ride. I wasn't unduly upset, it would have been a challenge to have spotted either on the marsh with a pair of binoculars.

Hesketh Out Marsh
(spot the merlin!)

A male merlin stormed through, to the utter indifference of the wigeon and teal, and a discrete scattering of skylarks, pied wagtails and meadow pipits. I followed the merlin across the marsh and something bigger and ghostly grey came into view. I can count the number of times I've seen a male hen harrier on the fingers of one hand, let alone a close view like this. I looked down for my camera and when I looked up the harrier had gone. The merlin came back for a second visit twenty minutes later but I didn't see the harrier again. 

There had been plenty of herring gulls and black-headed gulls flying overhead and a great black-back lingered menacingly on one of the pools. Then there was this odd-looking specimen that I'm assuming is a herring gull until somebody explains why it isn't.

?Herring gull, Hesketh Out Marsh

I decided to take the path across the bund and then down to Hundred End. More wigeons, teal and redshanks on the pools. I'd been carefully scanning the teal, it would have been typical for me not to have seen a green-winged teal that's been sitting on a pond for a week the other day only to unexpectedly bump into one here. (Spoiler: there wasn't one.) 

Redshanks and dunlin, Hesketh Out Marsh

Working on the old principle that it's worth double-checking any bird out on its own that should be in a flock I spent a while having a good look at a dunlin that was snoozing with a couple of redshanks. A lone whooper swan was easier to confirm, especially with a couple of family parties making a racket a couple of fields away by Shore Road.

Juvenile whooper swan, Hundred End

Whooper swans, Hundred End

Walking down the path to Hundred End I got closer views of the whoopers, and one flew in to get a closer view of me. A couple of young birds still had a lot of dingy grey about their plumage. One of the fields by the Centre Drain was partially flooded and had some shelducks dabbling round in the pools. There was a goose with one of the whooper families a couple of fields away. It looked big for a pink-footed goose and as I got closer I saw it had an orange beak. At first I took it for a greylag but as I got nearer yet I realised it was too dark and brown for a greylag and the beak wasn't as chunky as a greylag's. It shuffled round and I could just see a small patch of white at the top of the bill. A Greenland white-front, not quite adult, possibly a second-Winter bird.

Whooper swans and Greenland white-fronted goose, Hundred End

I got to Shore Road and decided not to walk down to Banks, the light was getting low and I had to conserve my energy for some serious eating with friends this evening. The choice was either waiting quarter of an hour for the bus back to Preston or half an hour for the bus to Southport so I got the bus back to Preston. A dozen teal whistled and head-bobbed in the drain by the bus stop and a handful of jackdaws tried to sound like a large crowd as they flew to their roost.

Cabbages, Hundred End