Twitch!

White-tailed lapwing, Bickershaw Country Park

Today's birdwatching involved a degree of planning and a year's supply of pure dumb luck.

I don't know why I've never visited Bickershaw Country Park before. It's been on my to-visit list for ages and I've gone past it umpteen times but it's taken the arrival of a white-tailed lapwing to get me going there. It's only five stops from Leigh on the number 8 bus and if it hadn't been pouring down I'd have walked it. I got off at Hulme Road and followed Google Maps' instructions to go past Firs Park. It took me three goes to find the entrance to the park from here, it's the little bit of grass by the tiny electricity substation.

Bickershaw Country Park

I followed a couple of rough paths through a mixture of open grassland and thin woods. The first warblers I heard were the willow warblers singing in the trees by the houses. They were joined by whitethroats in the bushes fringing the grassland, blackcaps in the woods, reed warblers and sedge warblers in the reeds and scrub by the pools and chiffchaffs in the big trees over on the other side of the lake.

I was negotiating a particularly treacherous bit of a path involving a wobbly stone, a slippery incline on muddy mine waste and a reed-fringed puddle when something astonishing flew overhead. It was shaped like a lapwing but patterned black and white like an avocet and with a sandy brown back. The white-tailed lapwing! I was in no position but to gawp as it flew off.

I carried on and eventually found an open space by a gap in the reeds overlooking a scrape. There were half a dozen birdwatchers standing there (I'd timed my visit to miss any rush of birders getting a look in before going to work). "Was that the lapwing that I saw flying off just now?" I asked. "If it was mostly black and white, yes," they said. "Stuff me," I said.

White-tailed lapwing, Bickershaw Country Park

I hadn't been stood standing there a minute when the lapwing flew back in. It stood in full view, not far away, and spent five minutes preening in the pouring rain. A very lovely bird, delicate-looking and mostly pastel shaded until the bird spread a wing to preen.

White-tailed lapwing, Bickershaw Country Park

White-tailed lapwing, Bickershaw Country Park

White-tailed lapwing, Bickershaw Country Park

I decided to move on, walking down the path to the car park. There were more warblers, swifts and sand martins hawked low overhead, and reed buntings sang in the bits of reeds and long grass bordering the trees. Out in the open grassland I could hear distant yellowhammers. A couple of small brown birds flitted about in the knee-high grass, I thought they were meadow pipits until one flew across the path; the back end was all wrong, there was a lot of it and the end of the tail was tapered and round. It's so rarely I get a proper view of a grasshopper warbler it isn't an instinctive ID for me.

Bickershaw Country Park
A sea of yellow rattle stopping the grass getting too rank

I got the number 8 into Wigan and took the train to Southport. I didn't have long to wait in the rain for the 44 to Marshside. The rain eased a little as I walked down Marshside Road from the bus stop and the house martins were making the most of it. I was surprised to see a pair of wigeons on the marsh with the Canada geese and lapwings.

I walked down to Sandgrounders to see if I could find the lesser scaup. It had been reported on Polly's Pool so I prepared myself for a long search in the mid-distance. A few mallards, avocets and coots fed in the pool immediately in front of the hide. Then a neat little duck swam up to say hello. Perhaps slightly smaller than a tufted duck, with a peaked head not unlike a ring-necked duck, and a finely-barred grey back. My first lesser scaup. A very different bird to an ordinary scaup (I still haven't seen one this year), not just because it was smaller, the proportions are different and it didn't have the heavy, low-slung back of a scaup. A rather uppity shelduck chased it off this pool, it landed in the big pool just to the right by the entrance path and took shelter in the company of Canada geese.

Lesser scaup, Marshside

Lesser scaup, Marshside

Lesser scaup, Marshside

Lesser scaup, Marshside

Little ringed plover, Marshside

This black-tailed godwit did a better job of supervising the mallard ducklings that the duck did

There was a fine supporting cast of waders. There were still a few black-tailed godwits feeding on the marsh and little ringed plovers feeding at the water margins. A mixed flock of about a dozen each of dunlins and ringed plovers flew in, loafed on a mud bank for five minutes then flew off over to Crossens Marsh. The avocets have young to look after and when they weren't chasing off gulls they were chasing off pied wagtails and little ringed plovers.

Bee orchid, Marshside

I found a bee orchid on the side of the path as I came in. I wouldn't have noticed it but it was near to a clump of early purple orchids that caught my eye. I looked for it again on my way back and would have missed it but for the early purple orchids acting as a marker. I wonder how many I've walked past in my time.

Early purple orchid, Marshside

I decided to head off home. On the train back the weather started to clear up and it stopped raining. Before the excitement of yesterday the plan for today was to have a wander round Martin Mere. It was still only mid-afternoon, I looked at the weather, I listened to the noise my joints were making. I could have an hour or so's wander and get some of stiffness walked out.

I looked at the weather, I listened to the noise my joints were making.

Dear reader, I stayed on the train.