Merseyside bumper bundle

Wheatear, Leasowe

After a bad night's sleep I postponed the planned adventure and had a trip out to the Wirral to see if I could pick up any passage migration.

I got the train to Moreton and walked down to Kerr's Field. The fields were quiet, just a few magpies and woodpigeons, but the surrounding trees and hedgerows were busy with robins, goldfinches and chiffchaffs. Birds lined the telegraph wires between the lighthouse and the fishery, alternating between flocks of swallows and family parties of collared doves. There were more chiffchaffs in the trees on Leasowe Common, together with a couple of mixed tit flocks, one of which included a couple of goldcrests. A flock of blackbirds were busy devouring the berries on the whitebeam bushes and didn't much care for my passing by.

Walking towards Meols

I walked down to Meols along the revetment. The tide was fast ebbing so most of the birds were already fairly distant. The hundreds of oystercatchers were very noisy, the gulls less so. The nearest gulls were mostly black-headed, the white drifts in the mid-distance mostly herring  and lesser black-backs, there were a couple of great black-backs with the herring gulls in the distance. Little egrets kept drifting by, a dozen of them congregated on a mud bank near the revetment and were joined by a grey heron. Between them the heron and egrets added a lot of croaks, grunts and barks to the soundscape as they squabbled between themselves. Try as I might I couldn't see why this particular patch of mud was so attractive.

Heron, little egrets and black-headed gull, Leasowe

Heron, little egrets and black-headed gulls, Leasowe

Heron, little egrets and black-headed gulls, Leasowe

At first sight there was just a lesser black-back on the groyne. All the waders were out on the beach but it was worth checking it out just in case. A couple of linnets popped up from the rocks then flew over onto the field inland. I lingered awhile and found a couple of wheatears — a male and a female — and three juvenile pied wagtails with a fine Winter male.

Pied wagtail, Leasowe

Wheatear, Leasowe

The usual transformation scene occurred as I crossed the groyne and suddenly the beach was full of redshanks and black-headed gulls with turnstones and a wheatear scrambling in the seaweed at the base of the revetment. By Meols Parade there were more herring gulls loafing on the beach, the further along I went the more loafing groups of gulls there were. I was halfway along the parade when I found a group of half a dozen common gulls  loafing in a patch of sea plantain.

Redshank, Meols

Wheatear, Meols

Approaching the lifeboat station there's more vegetation on the beach with little patches of marram grass with the plantains and samphires. A few pied wagtails and meadow pipits were foraging near to the seawall but I kept hearing something else. It took me a while to find a ringed plover then once I found one I suddenly found lots of them. And having found them I found a couple of dozen dunlins. There was quite a bit of variation between the dunlins, some being slightly smaller, a couple having longer bills, all of them definitely dunlins I'm sure. I was reminded of the old saying that every smallish sandpiper is a dunlin unless explicitly proven otherwise and it occurred to me yet again that I don't have a cat in hell's chance of ever finding myself a rare peep.

Common gull, Meols

Ringed plover, Meols

Pied wagtail, Meols

Meols

I didn't fancy carrying on down to Hoylake so I got the train at Manor Road and headed North with my all-areas Saveaway. My intention was to check out the waders at Hightown but I realised it would be low tide when I'd be getting there and I'd just be seeing distant shapes in the mud. I remembered I haven't visited Formby Point yet this year so I carried on to Freshfield and walked down to the National Trust reserve from there.

Formby Point 

Rather than walking down to the beach I took a meandering series of paths down to Formby. I hadn't gone far from the car park before I was hearing nuthatches and great tits in the pine trees. About a hundred yards further along I saw a red squirrel as it collected pine cones off the woodland floor. 

Most of the small bird movements I was reacting to turned out to be falling leaves or pine cones so it came as a relief to bump into a mixed tit flock — great tits, blue tits, coal tits and a few long-tailed tits. As I was sorting out the runners and riders another red squirrel came bounding overhead with a pine cone in its mouth and disappeared into a thicket of tall pines.

Red squirrel, Formby

I passed into a patch of deciduous trees and bumped into some goldfinches and chaffinches and spent longer than should have been necessary finding a particularly noisy buzzard.

In a clearing I was buzzed by a dragonfly I didn't recognise, a dark, large dragonfly with a thin blue abdomen. Most of the time there was just a blue patch at the waist of the abdomen but every so often the light would catch it just right and the whole abdomen looked a dark metallic inky blue. And of course would it eck as like sit still for the camera. I looked it up and by a slow process of elimination concluded it could only have been a lesser emperor, a first for me.

Formby Point 

I walked down to Formby Station for the trains home, having a bit of fun with the connecting train at Hunts Cross. Still, it had been a fine day, the birdwatching was good and I'd seen a new dragonfly, which can't be all bad.