New Brighton

Redshanks

Today was a reminder why most of my weekend birdwatching is kept local and nearly always away from popular spots: I find crowds exhausting these days. Oxford Road was bedlam, busy made worse by the new crowd control measures (it's taken me a week to realise that the problem is that passengers are being directed from open areas to congested areas rather than the other way round; I'm getting slow, in the old days that would have taken me ten minutes). The train to Liverpool was packed and, despite its being a grey and blustery day, the sea front at New Brighton was busy, too. Still, I got some exercise and a bit of birdwatching done rather despite myself.

New Brighton beach

I got off the train at Wallasey Grove Road and walked down to the lifeguard station, the idea being to have a look to see if the snow bunting was still where I saw it last month in the dunes by the Derby Pools. It's an odd thing but once snow buntings find a cushy billet for the Winter they'll hang around for weeks or even months. Given how busy this stretch was with both unruly yapping dogs and unruly yapping kids* I didn't hold up much hopes so it was a pleasant surprise to see the bunting flitting in and out of cover between waves of noisy passersby. It's a bit of a relief to see a skittish snow bunting, they often strike me as being wilfully unwary.

Carrion crow, preening after a bath

The beach was busy with walkers and dogs so there were only a few oystercatchers and crows and rather a lot of gulls about. The gulls were evenly divided between black-headed and herring gulls with handfuls of lesser black-backs and common gulls and a couple of great black-backs. I looked in vain for redshanks. A small, dark shape moving in the seaweeds at the bottom of the sea wall turned out to be my first purple sandpiper of the year.

Redshanks

I got to the marine lake and found out where all the redshanks were: the beach was so busy they'd all gone to roost on the pontoons in the company of another, rather fidgety, purple sandpiper.

Redshanks and purple sandpiper

I called it a day then. Filtering out the crowd scenes had tired me out far more than the walk had and I didn't fancy moving on to try and fit an hour's birdwatching in elsewhere. I'd got both today's target birds and kept the year list ticking over so it was a fair result for the day.

New Brighton beach

---

* I did wonder whether or not to delete that as being a bit curmudgeonly but it has to be said: some dogs, and some children, shouldn't be let loose in the public realm without leads and muzzles. I blame the owners.