Hodbarrow

Eiders

I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed off for Millom intent on a wander round Hodbarrow. It was a grey day and though the weather forecast promised better I wasn't convinced it was wise to leave my raincoat at home. I needn't have worried.

The journey was uneventful with a ten-minute connection at Barrow. Little egrets were thin on the ground on the Cumbrian salt marshes, most of them breeding inland. There were plenty of shelducks pottering about and a couple of dozen eiders on the Leven Estuary as the train went over it. Swallows twittered low over fields of lambs. The sun came out and Cumbria was ridiculously picturesque.

Across the Duddon Estuary from Foxfield on the train

The journey from Barrow to Millom was even more picturesque with low clouds drifting over the hilltops in bright sunshine. The first unexpected treat of the day was an osprey slowly lumbering towards the Duddon from a treetop perch in the fields near Green Road.

Arriving at Millom I walked down Maingate Road towards Hodbarrow. The hedgerows were noisy with song — mostly blackbirds, goldfinches, chiffchaffs and willow warblers and all nearly drowned out by song thrushes. Herring gulls and lesser black-backs loafed in fields and rooftops while black-headed gulls were busy commuting between the fields and their nests on the shingles in the lagoon.

Lesser black-back

Looking over the pool by the car park at Hodbarrow the songs of chiffchaffs and blackbirds in the trees by the path didn't drown out the croaks of nesting cormorants and herons and the peculiar bubbling noise of nesting little egrets.

Hodbarrow 

The walk across the heath was very pleasant indeed. The sun was bright, it was nicely warm and the gorse was in full bloom. There were a few bushes of broom peppered amongst the gorse, a nice change as I don't often bump into wild broom on my travels. Blackcaps and whitethroats joined in the warbler songscape; goldfinches, linnets, dunnocks and wrens provided backing vocals.

Broom

My first Sandwich tern of the year passed overhead with a beakful of sand eels. It wasn't my last.

Red-breasted mergansers

Eider

Goldeneye

I turned onto the sea wall and scanned the lagoon. What at first sight was a raft of eiders was actually a mixture of eiders, red-breasted mergansers, tufted ducks and a pair of goldeneyes.

Sandwich tern

There was no shortage of terns passing between the estuary and the shingle beach on the lagoon. Most were Sandwich terns, hundreds of them, some flying over the seawall at head height and most of them carrying beakfuls of fish. A couple of smaller, darker terns puzzled me. I'd become so tuned into the blindingly white plumage of the Sandwich terns in the bright sunlight that common terns looked positively grey. Once the penny dropped I could see there were a few dozen of them flying about, it turned out that they were nesting on a shingle bank a bit away from the Sandwich tern colony. 

Little terns

Little tern

Little tern

As I approached the open area with the hide I started seeing little terns flying over, an unnerving number of them flying at waist height with no respect for old blokes passing by. I was astonished by how many there were this year, they were flying about by the dozen. The air was filled with the sounds of terns: the deep grating calls of Sandwich terns, the staccato rasps of common terns and the fast, falsetto calls of the little terns which at times sounded like angry swallows. Which was confusing at times as there were a few sand martins and swallows hawking over the lagoon.

Sandwich terns

Sandwich terns

Sandwich terns

Sandwich terns and black-headed gull

Sandwich terns

Eiders and mergansers loafed on the banks of the shingles with greylags and Canada geese. There were almost as many black-headed gulls as Sandwich terns but they were nesting further apart and hogged more than their fair share of the shingle. A few pairs of oystercatchers and lapwings dug in where they could.

Eider

Canada geese (and goslings) and eider

I spent a while trying to get photographs of terns and eiders before heading back to Millom for the train home. The heath was still awash with the songs of warblers. It took me an embarrassingly long time to recognise the song of a lesser whitethroat, which wasn't the bird's fault, it was fair belting it out from the top of a hawthorn bush.

Lesser whitethroat

Hodbarrow

It was a more complicated journey on the way back: the train I was aiming for was cancelled so I had to wait half an hour but that turned out to work better for connections at Barrow and Lancaster and I didn't lose any time in the end. (I bet that now I've found that out it'll be one of the useful bits of service shown the door when the timetables change at the end of the month).

The osprey's nest near Green Road is still there but doesn't look to be occupied. Fingers crossed for the next time I pass that way. It was nice to see a couple of great egrets on the salt marsh by Carnforth, too, a nice bonus to an excellent day.

A bad connection in Manchester meant that while I was hanging round waiting to get home I found an active crow's nest by a night club (the youngsters are being fed fried chicken) and my first bat of the year, a pipistrelle, at Oxford Road Station.

Hodbarrow