Leighton Moss

Bearded tit

It was a grey day and the rain was persisting down but I needed to get some birdwatching done before I forgot what they look like so I headed off for Leighton Moss which has the advantages of plenty of hides for shelter and being two minutes' walk from Silverdale Station.

Before I left the spadgers and titmice brought my attention to the state of the feeding stations, the suet feeders being empty and there only being a day's left in the seed feeders at current rate of consumption. I've had to buy new seed feeders after the squirrels finally managed to bend the wires enough to be able to quickly fill their boots, cache it and come back to plunder the rest, emptying a feeder within two hours.

It was a straightforward trip up to Silverdale with my Old Man's Explorer Ticket and the rain abated to a steady light rain. Flocks of wigeon and teal littered the coastal pools, there was just the one great white egret this time. As I turned the corner and crossed the bridge into Leighton Moss a small flock of fieldfares flew low overhead into the trees somewhere over the causeway.

There was nobody at the Hideout when I arrived so I spent a few minutes watching the to and fro at the feeders. There were plenty of coal tits about with the other titmice and the dunnocks were giving the mallards a fair contest for the seeds that had dropped to the ground.

Teal

The pool at Lilian's Hide was busy with ducks. A crowd of gadwalls were with the coots on one side of the water, a dozen shovelers and a few dozen teal lurked by the hide, the shovelers dozing and the teal busy a-bobbing and courting. The gadwall seemed to have settled into pairs, as had the few mallards that were dotted about. A raft of half a dozen tufted ducks out in the middle of the pool with half a dozen dabchicks were the only diving ducks today.

Teal

The walk through the reedbeds was fairly quiet. The robins, wrens and titmice quietly rummaged in the trees and it was a pair of goldcrests of all things making most of the noise. The titmice don't seem to have established mixed flocks here yet, I saw pairs of great tits and blue tits and a family of long-tailed tits.

Walking through the reedbeds 

The pool at the Tim Jackson Hide was heaving with shovelers, teal and pintails. I thought the hybrid shoveler wasn't about today, it was only as I was packing my bag to move on that I realised it was asleep in front of the hide with its head stuck firmly in its back feathers.

Bearded tits

It was lunchtime so it was far too late to be seeing bearded tits on the grit feeders on the path to the Griesdale Hide. A pair reminded me that birds run to their own whims and rules. If you're lucky enough to see bearded tits on warm, sunny days they're sleek, streamlined little bodies. On cool, gloomy days like today they fluff themselves up and look like balls on sticks.

Teal

There were more teal, shovelers and pintails on the pool at the Griesdale Hide but half as many of them spread thinly over this larger pool.

Walking back there were more of the same though the bearded tits had moved on by the time I got to the trays. I walked past Lilian's Hide and followed the path round to the visitor centre. The alder trees were fizzing with goldfinches, chaffinches and siskins. It's always nice to see siskins at eye level, usually they're hanging upside down at the other end of a tall tree.

Siskin

I had one last look at the feeders at the Hideout and was rewarded by the appearance of one of the marsh tits, I'd had no luck in the willows by the reedbeds.

Checking the trains I found if I got the Barrow train to Arnside I could have ten minutes' nosy on the Kent Estuary before getting the train back to Preston. It was low tide and the estuary looked bleakly lovely. Redshanks and black-headed gulls foraged the nearby muds with a couple of curlews and a rather forlorn looking little egret. A small object dash-stopping in the mid distance turned out to be a ringed plover. Further out a dozen lesser black-backs loafed in a channel with a great black-back and shelducks dabbled by its bank.

Kent Estuary, Arnside 

On the train back I checked out the coastal pools again at Leighton Moss. No sign of any egrets this time but a couple of immature red-breasted mergansers were cruising about near the embankment.

I didn't fancy waiting the best part of an hour for the next train back to Manchester from Preston so I caught the Colne train and changed at Blackburn and got into Manchester ten minutes quicker than I would have done. There are advantages to the flexibility of the old man's explorer ticket.

Kent Estuary, Arnside