Friday wander

Curlew sandpipers, Crossens Inner Marsh

I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed off to Preston, the intention being to get the bus to Banks Marsh, see what was about and then walk down to Crossens Marsh and, if I had the legs, Marshside. The weather looked fair, if muggy, so I was optimistic of a decent walk.

At Preston I had the choice of waiting more than half an hour for the Southport bus to Banks or get the Ormskirk bus part of the way and have a bit of a potter about before getting the Southport bus. So I got the 2A to Longton Brickcroft, had half an hour's wander then got the 2 to Banks.

Hedgehog, Longton Brickcroft

The first thing I encountered at Longton Brickcroft was a fair-sized hoglet snuffling away on the grass verge of the car park. I was a bit concerned about its welfare but on my way back out I noticed it was still actively grubbing about in the grass but now well away from the tarmac.

On the big pond the mallards loafed on the bank while pairs of mute swans and gadwall cruised out on the water. Moorhens and coots fussed about and a profusion of common darters zipped about the surface of the pond. The trees and bushes were full of calling robins and more of them fossicked about in the leaf litter.

Longton Brickcroft 

I had my eye on the clock so I only walked up to the middle pond where a loosely organised mixed tit flock bounced about in the trees. I could hear but not see long-tailed tits while treecreepers and nuthatches were seen but not heard.

I got the bus with a couple of minutes to spare and headed for Banks, getting off at the stop at the top of New Lane Pace.

Pink-footed geese, Banks Marsh

As I walked up Banks Marsh I heard my first pink-footed geese of Autumn as they passed low over the fields. Woodpigeons, carrion crows and jackdaws rummaged around the cabbage fields, the jackdaws looking particularly furtive, Heaven knows why.

Banks Marsh 

At first sight the marsh looked empty. First sight is often misleading. Aside from a few pied wagtails the birds were distant on the marsh at this point. I could pick out shelducks and lapwings and a flock of about a hundred wigeons (those white wing flashes are a godsend) and I heard curlews and redshanks long before I saw them. A few little egrets were dotted around and I would have missed a distant great white egret had a passing heifer not made it obvious how big it was.

About a hundred yards down the path I started getting closer to the birds but never nearer than a couple of hundred yards. Flocks of starlings wheeled about and a small flock of golden plovers took to the air before settling back down on one of the pools. One of the plovers peeled off from the flock and flew overhead, looking distinctly dark under the wings. Could this be the American golden plover that's been reported here over the past days? No, it wasn't. As it got closer I realised it had black "armpits," a diagnostic ID feature of a grey plover. Under normal circumstances I'd have been delighted to see one here, I absolutely wouldn't have expected it. As it was I my being well chuffed had a tinge of disappointment about it.

My — very limited — experience of American golden plovers is that they look "different" to golden plovers in subtle ways that add up to "something different" but are individually difficult to nail down. They're longer legged and slightly smaller and they look sandy brown rather than golden brown and the eyestripe's thicker and whiter and I didn't have a hope in Hell of seeing any of those features at this distance with binoculars. So I gave up trying and concentrated on seeing what I could see about 

Looking inland from the bund on Banks Marsh

There were more lapwings, redshanks, shelducks and curlews and more small flocks of starlings billowed up from the marsh and settled down again. A few dunlin could be seen on the pools and a flash of white rump told me there was at least one curlew sandpiper out there. Hundreds of pink-footed geese passed overhead, mostly in small skeins of a dozen or so, a few skeins had more than fifty birds. Swallows zipped by in ones and twos. Meadow pipits and linnets flitted about and wrens chunnered from the depths of the bund's landward bank. Common darters patrolled the banks and migrant hawkers quartered the nettle beds on its sides. There was plenty for them to be after, I was being nibbled to bits by mosquitos.

Suddenly all Hell broke loose. All the waders were up, as were the black-headed gulls. All the ducks — wigeon, teal, mallard and shelduck — took flight then immediately took to the pools. I'd seriously underestimated the golden plovers, I'd had them counted in dozens and there were at least two flocks in their hundreds billowing about with the starlings and lapwings. Then I noticed something. In this rather dull light the underwings of the golden plovers varied from bright white to pale grey depending on how the light struck them. Except one bird. It's underwing never got any lighter than a rather dirty dove grey. I lost it as the flock wheeled and turned but picked it up surprisingly quickly when it wheeled back to the front of the mêlée. In every other respect at this distance it was a golden plover but it had a grey underwing. Which is how American golden plover became number 200 on the year list. 

The peregrine that had caused all the panic made one last pass through the crowd and headed inland. It was a very dark-looking young bird. The waders settled and somehow those two large flocks of plovers disappeared into the landscape.

Golden plovers, Banks Marsh

One of the smaller flocks of plovers, a bit shy of a hundred birds, settled on a pool about a hundred yards away, letting me have a proper look at them. A lot still hadn't moulted out of breeding plumage and were showing patches of black underparts and spangled gold on their backs.

Golden plovers and lapwing, Banks Marsh

A Canada goose flew low over the marsh. I checked it out on the grounds that any goose on its own is worth a second look but I was looking at the wrong end to be able to tell if it was the Todd's Canada goose that's become a Winter regular in these parts.

Buzzard, Banks Marsh

A juvenile buzzard was perched on one of the signs by the field margins on the landward side of the bund. 

I carried on as the path curved round and skirted Crossens Outer Marsh. Small flocks of black-tailed godwits joined the lapwings and wigeons in the pools and family groups of Canada geese and pinkfeet could be seen in the longer grass and little egrets marked out unseen pools.

It's a frustrating thing that the river is all of ten feet across here but you have to walk quarter of a mile into Banks to cross the bridge into Crossens to walk the quarter of a mile back to where you were. A few teal and mallard dabbled in the river and migrant hawkers zipped about the bankside vegetation.

Lapwings and black-headed gulls, Crossens Inner Marsh

I crossed Marine Drive and walked along the bund behind Crossens Inner Marsh. There weren't many black-headed gulls about, they were easily outnumbered by lapwings. Hundreds of pink-footed geese littered the landscape, mostly in family groups, while hundreds more flew overhead as they came into the marshes after a day feeding on inland fields. 

Curlew sandpipers, Crossens Inner Marsh

Eleven curlew sandpipers skittered and probed about the muddy edge of a pool oblivious of a rich bounty of midges and mosquitos whizzing about them. It's not often I get to see double numbers of curlew sandpipers, and certainly not as close as this.

Pink-footed geese, Marshside
A very young-looking juvenile on the right.

There were even more pink-feet on Marshside Inner Marsh, perhaps a thousand or more. They crowded out the Canada geese that were congregated over by Marshside Road and the only greylags I saw were flying overhead.

I didn't have the legs on me to walk round to Sandgrounders and beyond so I got the bus at Marshside School. As I waited for the bus I watched the flock of house martins over the rooftops and wondered how many days were left before they move on.

I got the train home from Southport. The fields of the West Lancashire mosses were heaving with pink-footed geese as we passed by.