Lazy day

Millom Station 

The weather was looking wet so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed off for Leighton Moss, the idea being that I could dodge from hide to hide between showers. 

What had been a gloomy day with steady light rain right up to Lancaster was heavy rain by Carnforth. A great white egret stalking the usually dry end of Carnforth Marsh was good to see, as was the marsh harrier by the line on the approach to the coastal pools at Leighton Moss. The pools themselves were empty, not a duck to be seen and the harrier wasn't to blame as it was following in the wake of the train. I looked at the pouring rain and decided that if it was too wet for ducks it's too wet for me (it dawned on me recently that I'm not Peter Pan). So I stayed on the train. Birdwatching from trains is mostly counting woodpigeons but there's always a chance of something unexpected.

By the time we got to Arnside the weather was distinctly murky as well as wet and the hills of the Lake District were but a memory. The redshanks and curlews on the salt marshes to Grange-over-Sands were easily overlooked unless they took to flight and the white on the shelducks positively glowed in the gloom. There was a distinct lack of little egrets on the marshes, they'd gone inland and were mostly sulking in the corners of fields.

There was an unusual lack of eiders on the Leven, unless they were all on the mudbanks obscured by mist. There were plenty of wigeon, though, and the curlews and redshanks were easier to see on the open mud.

It was woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows all the way until we'd just passed Furness Abbey. I was debating whether the white object in a field we were approaching was going to be a little egret or a great white egret. I'd settled on the latter but as we got nearer I realised it was bigger — and untidier — than any egret. Looking through a train window in murky light at a bird standing on its own in a field can easily play tricks with your sense of scale, though, so perhaps it was a great white egret that had fluffed its feathers up for some reason. "It won't be a spoonbill," I told myself as the bird lifted its head and showed me I was wrong.

I got the Carlisle train at Barrow. The plan was to go as far as St Bees then get the Lancaster train back but that got cancelled. (St Bees is a good switch point because there's a single track length of the line and the trains have to exchange tokens so there's no chance of missing the down train if the up train's running a few minutes late.) A bit of hurried calculation of train schedules, weather and shelter at stations concluded it would be best to get off at Millom and wait twenty minutes for the train back to Barrow. The alternative would be to go up to Workington and either be just in time for the Barrow train back or wait half an hour for the Lancaster train but this time of year most of the journey back would be in darkness. It was disappointing because that stretch along the Irish Sea coast can be interesting.

The visibility deteriorated North of Barrow. A flock of greylags near Roanhead were easy enough to see but by Askam it was foggy and by Kirkby-in-Furness it was impossible to see the other side of the Duddon. Teal and redshanks could be seen in the nearby channels and ghosts of black-headed gulls and lapwings on the mud beyond.

We crossed the Duddon and headed for Millom. The fields between Green Road and Millom were busy with rooks, jackdaws and geese. A small flock of greylags looked up at the train and decided it was nothing much, two larger flocks of pink-feet were decidedly disturbed by the train and did a lot of calling and wing-flapping at it went by.

The calls of the rooks and jackdaws nesting in the trees behind the petrol station by Millom Station echoed in the mist as I waited for the train back. I took an inland seat so I could try and see what I'd missed on that side on the way up.

Just outside Millom another, less excitable, flock of pink-feet grazed in a field. A raven was calling the odds from a dead birch tree near the abandoned osprey nest on Arnaby Moss. I wonder if the nest will be used again, either by ravens or ospreys. It's just as likely to attract great black-backs. As we crossed back over the Duddon a couple of curlews could be seen on the mud by the river.

By the time we were approaching Askam I'd reconciled myself to only seeing more carrion crows and molehills so the barn owl that rose from the trackside grass was a nice surprise. Whatever it had in its claws looked a bit substantial for a mouse or vole, it was possibly a young rat.

I got the Manchester train back from Barrow. I looked out for the spoonbill as we passed by but had no luck, a couple of little egrets in the next field along confirmed I had the sense of scale right. It was mostly carrion crows, jackdaws, herring gulls and woodpigeons the rest of the way to the River Leven. Crossing the river there were more wigeons and little egrets, on the other side of the river the pools and flooded fields were strangely bare of ducks. Thereafter it was mostly carrion crows, jackdaws, herring gulls and woodpigeons the rest of the way, with a few dozen greylags on the fields between Silverdale Station and the coastal pools.

It wasn't the intended birdwatching trip but it had been surprisingly productive.