Leighton Moss

Mute cygnets

Today was another sunny Summer day so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed out to Leighton Moss for a few hours' wander. I thought I'd best get this month's visit in before the bank holiday weekend. I had thought of going yesterday but news broke late on Wednesday night that a squacco heron had been seen there and I really didn't want to get involved in yesterday's twitch. A good decision on two fronts: the heron had moved on almost as soon as it was identified and the hides were uncomfortably warm and busy today so they must have been hell yesterday.

Objectively the reserve wasn't especially busy today but it felt uncomfortably busy with human noise, possibly because bar the occasional reed warbler or sedge warbler madly reeling in the reeds or the slightly more frequent explosion of a Cetti's warbler in the undergrowth by the paths the bird life was pretty quiet. A chiffchaff called a few times in the trees by the visitor centre, a couple of willow warblers trilled in those on the reedbed margins and a song thrush sang from some distant trees on the railway line. Even the noise of the nesting black-headed gulls was muted and a bit dozy.

From Lilian's Hide 

The gulls on Lilian's pool were either nest-sitting or muttering in their sleep, and sometimes both. A small flock of greylags flew in and cruised the far end. A pair of mute swans did a tour of the pool with their cygnets. Four-spotted and broad-bodied chasers hawked low over the reeds in front of the hide.

Drowned willows
I promise you there's a pool of water under all that willow cotton

Walking down into the reedbed everything was covered in a thick patina of willow cotton, looking like nothing so much as a school production of a haunted house mystery where the kids had a fight over who was in charge of the talcum powder. It was quite eerie, especially in the bright sunlight and with no sounds save the hubhubs in the hides. Blue tits, robins and wrens quietly fossicked about in the bushes. It wasn't until I got home I realised I'd not seen a great tit on this visit, a definite first after thirty-odd years.

The sky above the reedbeds was blue and birdless, not even a passing swift or hirundine. The path was awash with common blue damselflies, basking in the sunlight and darting off just at the last moment as I tried to avoid stepping on any of them.

Oystercatchers

There were a couple of dozen gadwall loafing on the pool by the Tim Jackson Hide. A couple of pairs of coots had tiny squeaking chicks begging for tidbits. A pair of oystercatchers were nesting on one corner of the roof of the sand martin box (which the sand martins still haven't discovered). A black-headed gull sitting on its nest on the opposite corner wasn't impressed and any time one of them crossed the halfway mark on the roof it yelled until they went back to their side.

Great black-backs

As I approached the Griesdale Hide a lady told me I'd just missed a fly-by bittern, which seems to be the pattern for me this year. The great black-backs are back on the osprey platform, the male on guard duty as the female sits. A heron flew in and started to feed on the pool by the side of the hide and a couple of little egrets flew by. A marsh harrier soared high over the reedbeds, drifting away from us all the while.

Blue-tailed damselfly

The reedbeds felt a little busier on my way back. A reed bunting sang from one of the willows and wrens sang in the reeds with the warblers. Another little egret flew overhead, as did a handful of black-headed gulls and a couple of woodpigeons. There were blue-tailed damselflies by Griesdale Hide and broad-bodied chasers patrolled the willow margins. I kept hoping to bump into a marsh tit somewhere along the way but it wasn't to be today.

Broad-bodied chaser

Walking back through the reedbeds

I didn't feel like walking round to the causeway or hiking over to the coastal hides. I'm going to have to go to the coastal hides first on my next visit here, I get too grumpy to want to bother when I leave them to last.

The next trains in either direction were cancelled, and the next after that were running late due to having unscheduled stops at intermediate stations to pick up the stranded, so rather than wallowing in my grumpiness for another hour and a half I got the bus to Carnforth then the bus into Lancaster and the train home except it was cancelled on arrival at Preston and I had to switch to the train jam full of people going home after a day out at Blackpool. I weighed up the pros and cons of various ways of milking a bit of extra value out of the old man's explorer ticket and decided to just go with the flow so I found a corner to sit in and headed home.

One of my grumpier days, I'm afraid, and the birdwatching was disappointing.