Leighton Moss

Marsh tit

I thought I'd start the week with a visit to Leighton Moss while the weather was behaving itself so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and bobbed over. I didn't have a lot of hopes for seeing the purple heron that was around yesterday morning but you never know, besides I was due a visit.

Black-headed gull

It was a quiet sort of day. A few chaffinches, blue tits and coal tits fussed about the feeders by the picnic area while mallards dozed under the tables.

The view from Lilian's Hide was mostly sleepy mallards and a raft of coots. A few black-headed gulls lingered around while the mute swans cruised about with their two remaining cygnets. Looking around I found a heron lurking on one of the rafts and there were tufted ducks and gadwall hiding in plain sight amongst the mallards.

Heron, black-headed gull and wooden decoy tern

I spent a while watching a dabchick supervising its full-grown youngster's feeding forays.

Dabchick

Adult (left) and juvenile dabchicks

As I stepped out of Lilian's Hide a mixed tit flock bounced out of the trees, the long-tailed tits accompanied by blue tits, nuthatches, a couple of marsh tits and a treecreeper.

Marsh tit
It's not often you get to see the underside of a perching bird's foot,

The walk down to the reedbeds was fairly quiet save for a family of wrens and some red deer — a couple of hinds and a fawn — in the field just beyond the fence. A few brown hawkers buzzed the reedbeds and a couple of common blue damselflies zipped around the ditches by the path.

Red deer

Another red deer hind was feeding in the reeds at the Tim Jackson Hide. There were about a dozen gadwalls on the pools, the males already a-courting and barely out of eclipse plumage. Although gadwall look very similar to mallards they're actually more closely related to wigeon. It's only when the drakes have their head feathers raised in courtship display that you see the family resemblance.

Gadwalls

There was yet another red deer at the Griesdale Hide, together with a heron and a mallard. And quite a lot of broad-bodied chasers.

From the Griesdale Hide 

Walking back there were more brown hawkers and a couple of common hawkers patrolling the reeds. A willow warbler called in the drowned willows, appropriately enough. That and a chiffchaff squeaking near the visitor centre were the only warblers on the day.

It started pouring down so I called it quits and headed for a train. Chaffinches had been the only finches I'd been seeing on the reserve so it was good to see goldfinches and greenfinches at Silverdale Station. 

I got the Barrow train as far as Ulverston and got the Manchester train back from there. Half a dozen goosanders swam in the main channel of the Kent as we left Arnside. The little egrets were more thinly spread over salt marshes this time and there were big flocks of black-headed gulls at Grange-over-Sands and on the Leven, with perhaps a dozen eiders. A few dozen greylags grazed the salt marsh between Cark and the Leven.

A family of bullfinches were added to the day's tally at Ulverston where all the gulls had moved on. The tide was coming in on my return journey with more eiders and a merlin on the Leven and a hundred or more redshanks roosting on the mudbanks at Arnside. The sun came back out as we travelled South. I toyed with the idea of going after the American golden plover at Glasson Dock then I saw the state of play with the trains at Lancaster and stayed sat down.

Red deer fawn