"Nice weather for ducks", I said, "Nice weather for ducks." "Bog off you silly devil," said the ducks.

Ring-necked duck

It was threatening to be a nasty rainy day so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed for Leighton Moss. If the worst came to the worst I could nip in, have a look out from Lilian's Hide and scuttle off again. Which is exactly what I did.

The murky drizzle we had when I left Manchester became biblical rain as we crossed the Lancaster Canal. It had eased a little on the approach to Silverdale so I didn't take fright and stay on the train. The coastal pools were very quiet: two greylags, two great black-backs and one black-headed gull. There a couple of dozen more greylags on the fields between the pools and the station.

Robin

Dunnock

One big advantage to the rain was that I had the Hideout to myself. A crowd of titmice — blue, great, coal and a marsh tit — were at the feeders with chaffinches, robins and dunnocks while mallards and moorhens tidied up anything that fell to the floor. I'm still fighting the camera settings as much as using them so although the marsh tit generously struck a picturesque pose on a branch by the time I got it in focus it had lost patience with me and got something to eat.

Moorhen

Walking down into the reedbeds towards Lilian's Hide I could hear a bittern booming in the distance. Then I heard an answering boom from further away which provoked a bit more booming from the first bird.

From Lilian's Hide

Lilian's Hide was a little busier but there was plenty of space for all comers including me. The water was very high, there wasn't a lot of space for any of the birds to loaf on. The little island remaining by the hide was dominated by a pair of greylags, a small bunch of tufted ducks clustered at the edge. Black-headed gulls perched on sticks or jostled on the nesting rafts; coots, teal and shovelers dabbled by the hide.

Black-headed gull

Greylags

There were a lot of ducks far out in the gloom. A large raft of pochards cruised the far reed margins while a dozen goldeneyes ducked and dived midwater. I knew the ring-necked duck was still about but I wasn't seeing it anywhere. I was trying too hard: it was sat on the island with the tufties.

Tufted ducks and teal.
The ring-necked duck is second left.

Even from here I could see that the great black-backs have claimed the osprey tower by the Griesdale Hide again this year. A cormorant pushed its luck by perching on the camera gantry.

A couple of female marsh harriers had buzzed the reedbeds a couple of times before settling down out of the rain. A male rose out of the reeds, did a lazy couple of slow figures of eight then ducked back in for shelter. None of the other birds paid any attention, it was obviously not hunting weather.

I didn't reckon my chances of seeing any small finches in the trees on my walk back to the visitor centre. I was dead right: the siskins were low in the brambles by the path feeding on blackberry pips.

Great tit

Robin, great tit and dunnock

I had five minutes to wait for the train to Lancaster or ten minutes for the Carlisle train. I waited for the Carlisle train, I could pick up the Manchester train at Ulverston and get home without waiting fifty minutes at Lancaster Station.

It was a high and angry high tide we crossed at Arnside and the salt marshes of Cumbria were awash. Curlews, shelducks and carrion crows watched the train go by. The little egrets were all inland, hunched disconsolate in fields or shrimping in ditches. I was surprised to see a red-breasted merganser with the shelducks and egrets on the salt marsh beyond Cark. As we crossed the Leven a raft of a couple of dozen wigeon bobbed in the water by the viaduct. They'd floated upstream by the time we came back.

It had been a wet and murky old day but I'd still managed to see fifty-odd species of birds.

From Lilian's Hide