Southport

Mallard and ducklings, Marshside

It bode well to be a fine Spring day so I negotiated the train timetables and went over to Southport for a wander round Marshside and Crossens. The Southport trains leave Oxford Road and Victoria within minutes of each other which means that if you can't make the connection you end up going out to Salford Crescent or Bolton and hanging round for three quarters of an hour for the next one. So I stopped over at Bolton and went out for a vegan sausage roll breakfast (the vegan one tastes better than the meat one).

With the leaves bursting t's getting harder to see the birds in the trees as the train goes by but that's more than compensated for by hearing more birds singing at the stations and signals. Blackcaps seem to like railway stations almost as much as blackbirds, robins and wrens.

I struck lucky and caught the 15 at Southport and was soon walking up Marshside Road. A couple of house martins hawked over Elswick Road, I didn't see any over the RSPB reserve.

Lapwing, Marshside

The change of season means that although there are crowd scenes on the reserve they aren't as obvious as in Winter as their constituents aren't big and goose shaped. There were dozens of Canada geese and greylags about but the crowds down Marshside Road were starlings, house sparrows, linnets and goldfinches. They were very busy and very vocal. Lapwings were widely spaced out on the fields, occasionally chasing off Canada geese that had clumped a bit too close to where nests must have been. Shelducks and mallards dabbled in pools with little egrets while gadwall and teal dozed in the drains. One female mallard had a couple of dozen ducklings in her charge. A sedge warbler sang from a bit of rough at the foot of one of the few remaining hawthorns on the opposite side of the road. A whitethroat held a territory in the bushes at the corner by the junction.

Whitethroat, Marshside

One of the joys of this time of year is the pineapple scent of gorse bushes with a sound track of warblers, skylarks and meadow pipits.

Gorse, Marshside

The surprise at the Junction Pool was a black swan asleep on a nest.

Black swan, Marshside

The wind had ensured it had been a chilly walk despite its being bright and sunny and I was glad of the shelter of the sand plant as I walked over to Sandgrounders.

It was quiet on the big pool, just a few loafing Canada geese, mallards and black-headed gulls and a Canada goose nesting on the big island. There were more nesting geese around the banks.

Ruff, Marshside

The black-headed gulls were sitting on nests on the marsh though the colony still seemed smaller than it has been, just a hundred or so birds. There were still a few dozen black-tailed godwits about with a few ruffs and redshanks scampering amongst them. The avocets were keeping their distance, I could see a couple of dozen from the hide. Another sign of changing seasons was the very few lingering wigeons dotted about in the pools.

Tufted duck with a brood of mallard ducklings

There were more mallard ducklings bobbing around on the water, including half a dozen that had been foisted onto a family of tufted ducks and were being taught how to dive. They did a good job of it though their buoyancy kicked in sooner than it did the tufted ducklings. Mallards are notorious for not laying all their eggs in the one nest as a sort of insurance policy.

Barnacle geese and black-headed gull, Marshside

The sun triumphed over the wind and it became a warm afternoon. Brimstones and orange tips fluttered about the dandelions by the hide and a willow warbler sang from behind the portaloo. Walking down the path I met more brimstones and a few peacocks and small tortoiseshells. A reed warbler reeled from a tiny patch of reeds on the bank of the main drain. I spotted a pair of barnacle geese amongst the Canada geese on Polly's Pool. There was no sign of the weekend's spoonbill, which didn't surprise me.

Over on the outer marsh little egrets and black-headed gulls shrimped in the pools and a dozen or so pink-footed geese grazed in the long grass. A marsh harrier, the only bird of prey I saw here today, wheeled high above the salt marsh.

There were more avocets on Crossens Inner Marsh and a lot more teal and shelducks. I saw some small black and white heads scampering between clumps of grass in a brightly-lit patch of mud and wondered if they were ringed plovers or little ringed plovers. I shifted position to try and reduce the glare and saw a couple of pied wagtails. Ten yards further along I was vindicated when I looked back and saw three little ringed plovers trotting over the mud.

Pink-footed geese, Crossens Outer Marsh

There were only a couple of dozen pink-feet left by the roadside on Crossens Outer Marsh. There was a good thousand of them over on Banks Marsh judging by the cloud that rose when spooked by a low-flying aircraft. There were plenty of little egrets and shelducks dotted about the marsh. I looked in vain for any water pipits by the wildfowlers' pull-in and found a male white wagtail.

I got into Crossens and got the 49 bus. I stayed on until Ainsdale, thinking that I might have a wander over the dunes but once I arrived I decided I against and got the train back to Southport and thence home. I think I'll have a lazy day tomorrow and recharge my batteries.