Hodbarrow

Sandwich terns

There are three high stress seasons in the birdwatching calendar: the New Year, Spring migration and Autumn migration. At these times you'll see reports of this, that or another bird you haven't got on your year list and the temptation is to throw yourself about chasing after ticks. This is the point at which the best counsel is to keep calm, see if anything's turned up someplace you'd be planning to go anyway, and remember that there's no guarantee that even if you're in the right place at the right time you'll actually see your target bird. If you go out often enough and look round long enough the year list ticks will come.

I had to remind myself of this this morning as I looked at the mass of Spring migrants reported yesterday. I had a cup of tea and a calm down then set off on today's planned excursion to Leighton Moss.

Which is how I found a probable Iberian chiffchaff on the railway station at Barrow in Furness.

I got myself an old man's explorer ticket at Oxford Road and got onto the Barrow train. Which was rammed solid up to Wigan and still extremely busy up to Lancaster. I looked at the weather, looked at the masses of people getting on at Lancaster and Carnforth and decided to give Leighton Moss a miss today. Hodbarrow would be much less busy and there's always a chance some Spring migrants might turn up there.

From the train, as we approached Silverdale Station, there were crowds of black-headed gulls on the coastal pools. Small flocks of avocets and black-tailed godwits clustered about the islands in front of the Eric Morecambe Hide and shelducks dabbled in the shallows.

The river was quite high at Arnside, high enough to keep the waders upriver while goosanders swam down the main channel.

The marshes on the Grange side of the estuary were still quite dry, with no pools to interest ducks or egrets. Beyond Cark the saltmarsh was damp enough for three little egrets to make a living. There were lots of redshanks at the water's edge on the Leven Estuary and a couple of dozen herring gulls loafing on one of the islands by the railway viaduct.

As we pulled into Barrow I noticed that there was a raft of forty or so herring gulls on Cavendish Dock. Oddly, most of the gulls around the station were lesser black-backs.

I went over to Platform 3 for the Carlisle train. As I was standing at the platform a couple of woodpigeons sang in the treetops and a small bird sang from one of the conifers by the roadside beyond the railway track. At first I wasn't sure if it was a great tit or a chiffchaff. It was chiffchaffish but not quite, had I only heard that quick snatch of it the once I might have thought it was a great tit doing an impersonation of a chiffchaff. Luckily it carried on singing as it flitted about between trees.  The rhythm was: 1-2 1-2 1-2-3. A hard "chiffchaff" though with a definite gap between the "chiff" and the "chaff," odd but well within the range of common chiffchaff song. This was repeated twice but then followed by three quick descending notes and a quick finish. There wasn't the tumbling quality of a willow warbler's song to this final touch. Overall there wasn't the continual repetition of a common chiffchaff: once 1-2 1-2 1-2-3 had been done there might have been half a minute before it was repeated. The train announcements spoiled my attempts at recording it. At one point the bird came out of the conifers and flitted about in one of the deciduous trees behind them and I managed to get a brief look at it. From what I saw of it I'd have been happy to identify it as a willow warbler: bright olive brown above, a strong, pale eye stripe, no obvious eye ring, bright straw yellow throat fading to a greyish white belly, and noticeably longer wings, with longer primary feathers than a chiffchaff. But singing a chiffchaffish song. I watched it for six minutes before I had to get on the train. It slowly dawned on me that this was probably an Iberian chiffchaff, though I'm still not 100% sure as I've only seen and heard three before now and their songs sort of petered out rather than ending as abruptly as this and I know there are reports of willow warblers having surprisingly chiffchaffish songs. So of course, having gone through the "Oh, that's what it is. No it can't be. It is, and here's why…" phases of the identification at the time I've had enough time since to have entered the "You must have imagined it" phase now. My notes look OK though.

Hodbarrow

Arriving at Hodbarrow I wished I could record smells. The air was thick with the coconut scent of gorse flowers and the song of chiffchaffs and willow warblers. There were a few blackcaps about, too, and a whitethroat in the open ground near the old mine chimneys. It was a warm Spring day with the sun veiled by a thin cloud that made the light bright but not harsh and enough of a breeze to keep everything feeling fresh. As I walked down to the seawall a flock of half a dozen house martins flew low overhead and swooped down between the gorse clumps.

Common chiffchaff

Red-breasted merganser

Eider

Out on the water near the car park there was a raft of herring gulls and small groups of greylag geese. Approaching the sea wall these were replaced by tufted ducks, black-headed gulls and eiders. The adult male eiders looked almost artificial: puffed-up, round and mostly pristine black and white. A couple of pairs of red-breasted mergansers looked particularly rakish. A couple of passing swallows made it feel almost like Summer.

Sandwich tern

I'd been hearing the calls of Sandwich terns over the noise of the black-headed gulls, I started seeing them when I reached the sea wall. There were at least a couple of hundred of them all told, chasing each other round the Duddon Estuary, to-ing and fro-ing over the seawall or screeching amongst themselves on the shingle beach in front of the hide. A few couples detached themselves from the crowd to bill and coo, nodding their heads and dipping their beaks in surprisingly quiet courtship displays.

Hodbarrow: the view from the hide

Sandwich terns and black-headed gull

Sandwich terns

Black-headed gulls

Sandwich terns

The black-headed gulls, having been in residence longer, were mostly paired up and a few were already on nests. Similarly a handful of lapwings and moorhens. The black-tailed godwits and golden plovers will soon be moving on, most of them were already looking spruce and fine in their Summer colours. There were a few redshanks about, not surprising with so many of them feeding with the curlews and oystercatchers on the estuary over the other side of the sea wall. More of a surprise was the spotted redshank, almost in full Summer black, preening by the water's edge amongst the golden plovers.

Golden plovers

Eiders and black-tailed godwits

Golden plovers
I'm always surprised just how much the black belly of the breeding plumage adds to the camouflage of these birds

Golden plovers and spotted redshank (at the back)

Hodbarrow, starting the walk back to Millom

I walked back to Millom and got the train back to Barrow thence back to Lancaster. There was a raven where I hoped an osprey might be near Green Lane and there were more red-breasted mergansers on the Leven Estuary. I'd timed my departure from Millom to minimise the waiting time at Lancaster but even so I had an hour and a half to wait for the train back to Manchester so I went there and back to Morecambe just to kill a bit of time, the schedule not allowing me to spend any time walking down to the sea front to see what was about.

Duddon Estuary

A pretty good day's birdwatching. As so often, not the one planned as I set out but going with the flow seems to work out just fine a lot of the time.

Sandwich terns

Holdbarrow