Southport (with surprise ending)

Merlin, Crossens Outer Marsh

I thought I should take advantage of a fine day for a wander round Marshside and Crossens. It was sunny and cool when I got an early train into Manchester (because the later ones were cancelled) and although it was starting to cloud over when I arrived in Southport the weather behaved itself all day.

I just missed the 44 to Crossens so walked down to Lord Street and by chance got the 40 which meanders through Marshside and has a stop by the little cut which gets you on the bund at the junction between Marshside Inner and Crossens Inner marshes.

Curlew, Crossens Inner Marsh

I was immediately struck by the large numbers of wigeons and teal on the marshes. There were also several family groups of greylags and several hundred each of lapwings and starlings. The lapwings spent most of their time billowing around in a panic as a buzzard moved around the marsh digging for worms. A few ruffs and a dozen or so golden plovers mingled with the lapwings and half a dozen redshanks fed in the pools with the ducks. It was harder work finding the shovelers and mallards and even harder to find the few Canada geese and pink-feet on the ground. It always amazes me how little notice most of the birds take of people walking along the bund, the wigeons get a bit twitchy but nearly everything else pays no attention and some, such as the mistle thrushes and curlews, will get a little closer to make sure you really aren't a threat before getting on with the business of getting something to eat.

Wigeon, Crossens Inner Marsh
Three drakes in various stages of moult from eclipse (centre) to breeding (right)

Mistle thrush, Crossens Inner Marsh

The lapwings on Crossens Inner Marsh eventually settled down only to rise up in panic again, this time triggered by an eruption of lapwings and starlings on the Outer Marsh. I tried, and failed, to find the cause and made a mental note to keep an eye out for potential suspects when I got over there. The usual crowd of black-headed gulls loitered round the pools at the end of the marsh by the water treatment works, more of them were making a racket round the settlement beds.

Lapwings, Crossens Inner Marsh

Greylags, Crossens Inner Marsh

Black-headed gulls, Crossens Inner Marsh

Carrion crow and buzzard, Crossens Inner Marsh

I crossed Marine Drive and walked down alongside Crossens Outer Marsh. When the sun was out it was glorious but you felt the chill when a cloud passed over and there was a cool breeze that went straight to the kidneys. There were thousands of birds out there, even if you don't count the hundreds of lapwings, black-tailed godwits and starlings billowing overhead and the skeins of pink-feet passing by. 

Meadow pipit, Crossens Outer Marsh

Nearby the little pools were mostly occupied by teal and shovelers with large groups of wigeon grazing on the banks and surrounding grass. Meadow pipits and pied wagtails bounced around on the turf by the old wildfowlers' pull-in. I was unlucky with the couple of water pipits: I saw them flying off as a chap picking litter accidentally got too close to the fence for their comfort. 

Pink-footed geese, Crossens Outer Marsh

A couple of pink-feet pottered about on the grazed grass by the road. There were dozens more over near the fencing and hundreds in the long grass on the salt marsh. Further out yet the whites of shelducks and little egrets stood out in the sunshine and a few hundred Canada geese grazed in the mid distance. Further out yet on Banks Marsh and beyond were lines and lines of  hundreds, if not thousands, of unidentifiable geese and ducks.

One Canada goose was sitting on its own not far from the pink-feet by the fence over by the salt marsh. On the principle that any social bird sitting on its own is worth a second look I gave it a second look. And a third. It was a compact, dark-looking bird so I got my hopes up on its being the Todd's Canada goose that keeps returning here. The road curves by the pull-in and this was to my advantage as the change of angle let me see that the black of the neck faded into the brown of the back and, crucially, that the black under the chin met the black of the neck. I'd found myself a Todd's and was quite pleased with myself.

The cause of the panics was revealed as I passed a merlin sitting by the roadside utterly indifferent to passersby. I put a bit of distance between us before getting out the camera but it didn't give a monkeys anyway.

The walk down to Marshside was more of the same, with the addition of families of greenfinches feeding in the hawthorns along the road.

Wigeon, Marshside

Marshside was relatively quiet. Polly's Pool was empty save a couple of herring gulls and all the geese and most of the wigeon were over on the side by the bund. Groups of teal, mallards and gadwall loafed and dabbled in the drains, pairs of shovelers dozed by pools and a few dozens of lapwings and black-tailed godwits fed on the grass. Four snipe flew by as I got to the cut with the wooden bench and they disappeared into the mounds of dead grass by the drain.

Gadwall, Marshside

Unusually there were no waterfowl at all on the pond by the entrance to Sandgrounders except for the moorhen picking its way through a crowd of herring gulls and juvenile great black-backs.

The birds on the pools at Sandgrounders were mostly mallards and wigeons with a few teal and gadwalls and a couple of pairs of shovelers. It wasn't my day for seeing any waders other than lapwings here today.

Wigeon and shovelers, Marshside

I didn't hold up much hope of seeing anything on the Junction Pool as there was a hedge-cutting team at work and I was dead wrong. The pool was littered with pintails, shovelers and mallards with dabchicks lurking in secluded corners. Oddly I didn't see a single tufted duck anywhere on Marshside today.

Marshside 

I walked up Marshside Road and sat on the bench overlooking the marsh for a few minutes, scanning the grazing cattle for any cattle egrets without any success. There were plenty of little egrets and starlings taking advantage of anything the cattle might disturb. It seems absurd to be thinking of its being "a bad year for cattle egrets," even if it has been.

The next train home was the one to Stalybridge that doesn't stop at all the halts but still has to take its time so as not to run into the tail of the Alderley Edge train that left Southport a few minutes minutes earlier. (The schedule has you waiting fifty minutes then two leave together.) We'd just left Burscough Bridge and were slowing down to steam through Hoscar when I noticed a large, pale bird in the dark ploughed field ahead. At first I thought it was a large chicken, it was hunched over and had that slow, deliberate plodding walk of a chicken on fallen leaves. Then I realised it was huge — bigger than any chicken — and had long legs. It was entirely wrong for a heron and besides, it was much bigger. I was completely baffled. It would have remained a "What the hell was that?" had it not turned when the train got abreast with it and I saw that it had a long neck and must be a crane of some sort. But I was still baffled, it didn't look like any crane I knew. I've seen one wild common crane and I've seen a few in collections but it didn't look like them. I craned my neck (pun not intended) as I made notes of its appearance. It was sandy grey, slightly paler underneath and at the front of the neck, mottled brown on the wings and dusky on the top of its head. Long neck, big and untidy body, long legs, bill pale and long but not so much as a heron or egret. All of this in the space of about twenty seconds. Over the next ten minutes I found out that juvenile common cranes don't look very much like the adults I've seen. I'd got a sore neck but I'd learned something new and added to the year list.