Martin Mere

Pochard

A bright sunny morning looked like turning into a melancholic overcast lunchtime as I stepped off the train at New Lane but mercifully it changed its mind. I'd come for a visit to Martin Mere but decided to go the long way round to see if there were any Winter warblers by the water treatment works.

Pink-footed geese, New Lane

As I walked along the path by the railway line pink-footed geese and black-headed gulls flew overhead and robins and blackbirds bounced about in the hawthorn bushes. The filtration tanks on the other side of the line were busy with pied wagtails and starlings.

By New Lane 

At first glance there didn't seem much on the fields on this side of the line except carrots. The piece of set-aside had been mostly turned over, a few entirely stripped heads of sunflowers poking up here and there. Then I got to the field of fennel which was busy with small bird noises and the occasional appearance of linnets or meadow pipits. The field beyond that had sixty-odd woodpigeons feeding on it. There were more woodpigeons in the trees on the edge of the field, also a flock of a hundred or so finches, mostly chaffinches with goldfinches, greenfinches and linnets silhouetted against a sun that had decided to emerge from the clouds. I couldn't see any bramblings or buntings.

Stonechat, New Lane

A little egret flew by as I approached the crossing and a kestrel was hovering over the rough on the other side before it decided to head for the reedbeds at Martin Mere. I was escorted off the rough and onto the path around the reedbeds by two pairs of stonechats.

Windmill Farm

The sun was out good and proper now and provided an excellent golden modelling light across the mosses and Martin Mere.

Treecreeper

The path around the outside of Martin Mere was exceeding damp in parts and in a couple of places only navigable by taking a long detour through a patch of thistles. The hedgerows were quietly bustling. My first blackcap of the Winter, a female, was bustling about in a patch of hawthorn with a treecreeper and a couple of robins. Further along I started to bump into small tit flocks, equal numbers of blue and long-tailed with great tits in attendance.

There was a greenfinch there a moment ago

I stopped counting Cetti's warblers after the fifth one sang from the scrub I was skirting on a detour through a thistle patch. Water rails squealed at each other from the reedbeds on the other side of the hedge and every so often a moorhen would swim across the path. Small groups of greenfinches and chaffinches bustled through the treetops.

The path was a little damp

I walked up the path to the sewage works fence and had a look round. There was a very noisy wren and rather a lot of midges but nothing by the way of warblers.

By the water treatment works 

Walking past the pool by the gate to the outside world the only gadwall of the day was dozing with mallards in the corner of the reeds.

Despite all the rain the walk down to the road was less ghastly than last time though still grim. I was tiptoeing around the edge of an extremely deep and dank puddle, both hands holding onto the fence for support, when a Cetti's warbler leap out of the patch of mugwort on the other side of the mire and shot through the fence by my side, disappearing into the reeds by the drain. Not for the first time I wondered why I do this to myself. A little further on I stood ankle-deep in the mud as I checked out a big flock of chaffinches in the treetops hoping in vain for the first brambling of the year. Try as I might they were all chaffinches. Except for the ones that were mistle thrushes or great spotted woodpeckers.

Whooper swan

The wildfowl were starting to congregate on the mere ready for the afternoon feed scheduled for three o'clock. 

Largely whoopers and mallards

There was a good three quarters of an hour to wait but already the patch of water immediately in front of the Discovery Hide was wall-to-wall whooper swans, mallards, wigeons and pochards. The pintails and shelducks were keeping their distance and all the teal were over on the islands with the lapwings. At least a thousand pink-feet were on the reserve, a few hundred of them on the far bank with more incoming.

Whooper swans, pink-footed geese, cormorants, pintails, lapwings and shelduck

The long muddy walk had taken its toll on my knees (and I'd forgotten to put a new packet of painkillers in my pocket when I came out) so I decided not to make a long wander of my visit, I still had to keep some in the tank for the walk down to Burscough Bridge for the train home. I strolled down to the Ron Barker Hide, the hedges busy with titmice, finches and blackbirds but no sign of any tree sparrows.

Marsh harrier roost

There were a hundred or so wigeon on the pool by the Ron Barker Hide with perhaps half as many teal. A few whooper swans grazed with a Canada goose. A marsh harrier flew in and dropped into the trees at the end of the drain to join the four harriers already gone to roost. I had no joy in my scan round for owls but found a buzzard sat on a distant fencepost.

From the Ron Barker Hide

Fieldfare

Walking back I noticed a mixed flock of fieldfares, chaffinches and greenfinches settling into the roadside trees behind The Duckery, the low sun setting the fieldfares' chests ablaze against the blue sky.

Tarlscough Lane 

I'd had no luck seeing barn owls at the Ron Barker Hide nor any finding tawny owls in the ivy-covered trees by the Kingfisher Hide and I was to have no luck finding little owls in the paddocks in the fading light along Red Cat Lane. There were consolations: flocks of fieldfares and lapwings heading for roosts, large skeins of pink-footed geese overhead and the incongruity of a male sparrowhawk settling down to roost with a flock of pied wagtails deep in the treetops by Brandeth Barn. And the sunset was worth the price of admission.

By Brandeth Barn
(That's a field of Winter barley not a lake)