Southport

Sedge warbler, Marshside

The pollen count was heading high so I headed for the seaside and a wander round Marshside and Crossens.

It was muggy when I arrived at Marshside and the house martins were almost as busy as the house sparrows and starlings in the paddocks by Marshside Road. Not much seemed to have changed since my last visit: a few more Canada goose goslings and the sedge warblers and whitethroats being a bit more vocal.

Bee orchid, Marshside

More of the flowers were open on the bee orchid and most were pointing towards the path which made the photography a lot easier.

At Sandgrounders there were still a few black-headed gulls on nests in the grass and a dozen or more avocets sat on nests about the pools. A few dunlins skittered about, a dozen or so black-tailed godwits dozed in the shallow pools with a curlew sandpiper busily feeding around their legs. There was a distinct lack of plovers other than the lapwings scattered about the marsh. A tiny round brown and white shape sitting on the far waterside looked intriguing until the breeze unfurled what turned out to be a moulted goose feather.

Curlew sandpiper and black-tailed godwit, Marshside

Black-tailed godwits, Marshside

Dunlins, Marshside

A lot of the drakes were already starting to moult into eclipse plumage: the mallards had lost some of the shine from their backs and heads, the gadwalls were taking on bits of a patchwork quilt pattern and the shovelers had almost completely replaced the green heads of their breeding plumage with the steely blues of eclipse. The lesser scaup was still being reported over the bank holiday weekend but I looked in vain for it, all the possibles I caught sight of in the distance on Polly's Pool turned out to be drake tufties beginning to lose the high contrast tones of their breeding plumage.

I wandered down the path towards Crossens. There were plenty more ducks, geese and lapwings on the marsh and pairs of oystercatchers were keeping close company but didn't seem to have any youngsters with them. Every other big patch of brambles and hawthorns had a singing whitethroat, the gaps between them punctuated by sedge warblers.

Oystercatchers, Marshside

All the while I kept scanning Polly's Pool just in case I'd been missing anything. (It has been known for me to have not noticed a spoonbill on here until a passerby asked me what the tall white thing was.) A couple of tufties in a creek coming off the pool caught my eye. I kept half-registering something not quite right about one or other but they were so busy diving I couldn't pin anything down. It took five minutes to realise that one of them had a grey back and even that wasn't obvious most of the time. It was nothing like the close views of the lesser scaup I had last week. Luckily I'd taken a couple of more distant shots that I could use as a reference: close up the grey back really jumps out at you but from a distance it recedes and you notice the black flight feathers a lot more. This is the difficult distant view I'd anticipated last week and I'll admit the identification would have probably defeated me.

The weather cleared up as I walked and it soon became a warm sunny day. It was fairly quiet on this side of Crossens Inner Marsh — all the action seemed to be going on in the pools over by the bund. A few little egrets and a couple of herons lurked by the little creeks and pools. It was even quieter over on Crossens Outer Marsh save the songs of skylarks and meadow pipits and the lowing of grazing cattle.

Heron, Marshside

Painted lady, Crossens Marsh

At last there were butterflies about, mostly large whites. The bright magenta of a cinnabar moth caught my eye and as I watched it moving through a bramble patch a rather faded painted lady flew in and started feeding. It felt odd to bump into one in the context of there being so few butterflies of any kind about.

As I approached the end of the path a couple of common blues fluttered about at ankle height. For once one stayed still long enough for me to get a photo of it.

Common blue, Crossens Marsh

I took a stroll along the bund back into Marshside. Families of mallards, greylags and Canada geese had clusters of youngsters about them and there were a few avocet chicks running about though most of the adults were still sitting on nests.

Mallard and ducklings, Crossens Marsh

Avocet, Crossens Marsh

There weren't the clouds of swifts and hirundines there had been last time I came this way, there were plenty of swallows but just a couple of swifts and most of the house martins were over Marshside.

We'll skip over the hour's delay setting off home because two trains were cancelled at Southport. It had been a good day's birdwatching.

Mute swan, Crossens Marsh