Pennington Flash

Tufted ducks

Yesterday's weather forecast proving a tad optimistic I spent the morning wondering how fat a squirrel has to be to be able to bend the steel plate at the base of a metal fatball feeder.

Pennington Flash 

The weather tidied itself up a bit by late afternoon so I thought I'd chance a teatime wander round Pennington Flash. The weather was mixed with sunshine and very heavy showers and a continual wind.

I walked down from St Helens Road to the Southern bank of the flash. It was fairly quiet, a few robins and blackbirds clicking their annoyance at my passing, woodpigeons and magpies clattering about and a lone chiffchaff calling in the willows.

Tufted ducks

The flash was very busy with birds. A diffuse raft of a couple of hundred coots stretched across the water while groups of a dozen or so tufted ducks steamed to and fro. A few hundred black-headed gulls littered the water. It was a bit early for the large gull roost, there may have been fifty or so herring gulls and a similar number of lesser black-backs. There weren't many mallards about, a few dozen lining the bank by the car park with a few mute swans and Canada geese (most of the Canada geese were feeding on the golf course). The car park oystercatcher was being very vocal, a dozen moorhens quietly fussed about the picnic benches and a young greylag preened on the water's edge. The wind and the yellow leaves weren't the only signs of Autumn, there was a pochard amongst the raft of tufties by the car park.

Horrocks spit

Horrocks spit was awash. A few mallards dabbled round the edges while half a dozen cormorants loafed with the coots and herring gulls at the end of the spit and a dozen great crested grebes drifted across the channel.

Mute swan and cygnets

The first very heavy shower hit just as I got to the Tom Edmondson Hide. A mute swan and its cygnets headed for cover, a couple of coots scrabbled into the reeds and a pair of gadwalls flew in and headed for the shelter of the bank. A heron perched on the far bank looked disconsolate and with good reason. The rain disappeared as quickly as it arrived so I took the opportunity to move on.

From the Tom Edmondson Hide during the shower 

And after

The water was understandably high at Ramsdales and the pool was crowded with teal and moorhens. It struck me that the only wader I'd seen today was the oystercatcher. It's unusual not to see any lapwings here at all. I was just about to move on (I was being spooked by the wind slamming the door of the hide) when a kingfisher flew in and perched on a pole. I got a couple of pretty awful record shots, the only photos I've managed to get this year as all I've been seeing have been bright blue streaks heading off in the opposite direction.

Kingfisher

The sky bode dodgy so I decided to start drifting back. I popped into Pengy's Hide for shelter, the pool holding a couple of dozen each of gadwall, tufted ducks and coots.

The feeders are back in business at the Bunting Hide and a few great tits and blue tits were busy at the fatballs. It's a testament to the weather that the most numerous birds were mallards until a flock of chaffinches flew in. I lingered until chucking-out time in the hopes that a willow tit might wander in but to no avail.

Pennington Flash 

It poured down as I headed back to St Helens Road so I didn't stop to watch the incomers to the gull roost. There'll be plenty enough another day.