Merseyside

Tufted ducks, Crosby Marine Lake

There are times when the BirdTrack app pisses me off no end and today it was particularly bad, which meant I spent rather a lot of time transcribing from my notebook once I was back home and it was back up and working. Usually the map function's continually crashing the app means it's time to do a reinstall, today it was a server connection problem which meant the reinstallation just made things worse. Anyway… it got working in the end so I have numbers and graphs and maps and things.

I thought I should make an effort to get some more waders onto the year list before the month was out so I headed over to Hightown. The tide was well on the ebb when I arrived at Hightown Dunes and there was a lot of waders out on the exposed mud. There was also some pretty lousy light and a strong, cold wind blowing in from the sea, both of which gave the binoculars and camera a bit of a challenge.

Curlews and a cormorant, Hightown

I made a start by sitting on one of the benches by the sailing club and having a good scan round. The large numbers of curlews were very conspicuous, the redshanks were fewer but noisier and generally closer to shore. A few mallards and shelduck dabbled in the river or loafed on the banks. It took me a while to get my eye in on the dunlins even though there were small groups of them just on the opposite bank of the river. And it took even longer to find a few bar-tailed godwits to add to the year list. There weren't many oystercatchers but I suspect a lot more of them were the dark objects out near the waterline.

Redshanks, curlews and dunlins, Hightown

Redshank and dunlin, Hightown

I took a walk round and walked down to the end of the little jetty to see if I was missing anything in the river. There were more mallards and redshanks and a few black-headed gulls but no additions to the wader tally 

A squall of rain coming in from the sea was my hint to move on. The plan was to go down to Waterloo and get the bus to Lunt Meadows. Unfortunately I just missed the train and with the revised timetable the next train would have me missing the bus by ten minutes. No matter, I could have a wander round Crosby Marine Lake.

First-Winter drake and duck goldeneye, Crosby Marine Lake

First-Winter drake and duck goldeneye, Crosby Marine Lake

There were a couple of cormorants by the side of the marine lake and a couple of great black-backs loafing on a raft out in the middle. A raft of half a dozen goldeneyes was doing a circuit of the lake and came quite close to shore. For all the head-bobbing that was going on both the drakes were first-Winter birds. The only adult drake goldeneye was on the little boating lake with the mallards and coots accepting meals from passing strangers.

Drake tufted duck, Crosby Marine Lake

Duck tufted duck, Crosby Marine Lake

A herd of a dozen mute swans was loafing at the shallow end of the boating lake in the company of a couple of dozen Canada geese. The water on the pool was so choppy that most of the coots were feeding on the grass with half a dozen black-tailed godwits but the tufted ducks seemed happy enough to bob along with the waves. One of the tufties made me look twice as she was one of those individuals where the white markings at the base of the bill are similar to those of a female scaup, making a very conspicuous white front to the forehead. Luckily, scaup and tufted ducks are completely different shapes so there's not a lot of scope for confusion seen as close as this. (Mind you, I have a nightmare that some day I'll see my first lesser scaup and I'll decide it's just a female tufty.)

There were plenty of gulls about, mostly black-headed. There were a couple of common gulls mingling with the crowds but just a couple of herring gulls on the boating lake and both of them young birds.

Crosby Marine Lake

There's a lot of work being done on the nature reserve at the moment so I decided to give staring through the fence a miss today.

I had ten minutes to wait for the next 133 bus and spent most of that time watching a sparrowhawk making repeated attempts on the flock of pigeons that circled overhead.

I didn't stop over at Lunt Meadows as planned as I wouldn't have much time to look round before having to head back to catch the next bus.The idea was to get to Kirkby, get the train to Wigan and have an hour's wander round Orrell Water Park. The idea was. The train timetable didn't allow it: I'd just miss the next train and there'd be the most part of two hours' wait for the next. So I got off at Maghull North and got the Ormskirk train thinking I could stop off at Rufford on the way to Preston from Ormskirk. What I didn't know was that a rail replacement bus was doing the Ormskirk to Preston run. I stayed on the bus: whatever time was on the timetable at Rufford wouldn't be the time for the next bus and I could do without the hassle.

A frustrating begining and end to the day's birdwatching but I got a couple of gentle strolls, saw forty-odd species of birds, added bar-tailed godwit to the year list and confirmed that the days are getting longer and I can sensibly consider visiting three sites in one day without being silly or skimping.