Merseyside bumper bundle

Black swan, Crosby Marine Lake

I thought I'd best put a bit of effort into the first reliably sunny day of the week so I got an old man's explorer ticket, got the train to Hunts Cross, bought an all areas Merseytravel Saveaway and set off for a day out.

Herring gulls, Crosby Marine Lake

First stop was Waterloo where I walked down to Crosby Marine Lake to see what was around. The answer was the usual suspects: rather a lot of herring gulls, a few black-headed gulls, the usual herd of mute swans, a few coots and mallards, a small raft of tufted ducks and the pair of black swans that have taken up residence on the boating pond. I still can't quite get over seeing little egrets on the lakeside here. It was quite busy with people, it being a sunny Saturday, so the songs of the skylarks were pretty much drowned out.

The tide was lowish on the beach and kids and dogs were taking full advantage of the space so there wasn't much about save for pigeons and carrion crows and small groups of herring gulls loafing at the timeline.

Black tern, Seaforth Nature Reserve
(Heavily-cropped record shot)

I peered through the fence into Seaforth Nature Reserve. There were a few linnets about on the grass with a couple of pairs of sleeping shelducks. More shelducks fed on the pool and a large flock of oystercatchers were roosting on one of the islands. Although there were a lot of herring gulls and black-headed gulls about most of the noise was coming from the common tern colony. I looked around for any other terns, thinking there might be some Sandwich terns about if nothing else. I was surprised to find a black tern dancing across my field of view. It showed very well, even at this distance. Anyone sat in the hide should have had cracking views. I eventually found just the one Sandwich tern flying about over near the docks.

The Cetti's warbler was still singing in the tiny nature reserve next to the sailing club. Its only warbler companion today was a single whitethroat singing from the willows.

Shelducks, Hightown

Hightown

I moved on to Hightown, walking down to the dunes to see if any waders were about. Given how low the tide was I wasn't overly surprised to find the only ones I found were a pair of ringed plovers. There were rather a lot of shelduck feeding on the mud in scattered pairs or small family groups. One distant pair of shelducks walking across the mud were chained together by fourteen ducklings.

Last port of call for the day was Crossens and Marshside, again to see what waders were about. (For all that I've had a couple of lifers this month I'm still missing a few of the usual waders I'd expect to see on passage this time of year).

Gadwall, black-headed gull, dunlin and ringed plover, Crossens Inner Marsh

I walked down from Crossens and started walking down the bund at the back of Crossens Inner Marsh. The first thing that struck me was the cloud of house martins and swifts feeding about the water treatment works.

There were the usual lapwings, oystercatchers and avocets on the marsh. The only small waders about were a dunlin and a ringed plover which seemed to be joined at the hip. The greylags and Canada geese had youngsters in tow.

Avocet, Crossens Inner Marsh

Marshside was much the same, with redshanks taking advantage of the thicker grass to nestle down in and a couple of shovelers in the pools. An incoming flock of starlings spooked a small flock of dunlins and they in turn spooked some redshanks and a handful of black-tailed godwits.

I checked the time and made for the bus back into Southport. For the first time in the past couple of months the Manchester-bound train actually got through into Manchester. I'd visited three quite different seaside environments and though I didn't wobble the year list and there weren't any huge crowd scenes there had been plenty enough about and I'd seen fifty-odd species of birds.

Hightown