Southport

Juvenile avocets, Marshside

It was another offer of a cool, cloudy day with a high pollen count so I scuttled off to the seaside in the hopes a sea breeze might be a mitigating factor. I got to Marshside just before lunchtime and though there was moisture in the air it kept dry and even became warmer and sunny as the afternoon progressed. 

I'd got the 44 from Southport Station and was soon walking down Marshside Road. The house sparrows and goldfinches were busy in the roadside hedges and house martins hawked low overhead. The marshes were a tale of two halves: boggy and still with large pools on the left, dried out on the right, busy with birds right up to the roadside on the left, distant on the right.

To my right there were grazing woodpigeons, family groups of Canada geese, dozing shelducks and a few little egrets in damp creeks and gullies before the black-headed gull colony at Sandgrounders. Small flocks of starlings flitted about and dozens of swifts swooped and hawked over the marsh.

This black-headed gull decided I was too near its nest and kept mobbing me despite the fact I was walking along the other side of Marshside Road to that part of the marsh.

Over on the other side of the road nesting black-headed gulls vied with redshanks and lapwings for who could make the most noise whenever a large gull passed by. A couple of pairs took exception to my walking by on the other side of the road. Coots had fair-sized juveniles with them, the Canada geese had half-sized goslings, mallards and gadwall had ducklings eager to give their new flight feathers a good wagging. One gadwall had a dozen large ducklings with her, possibly because they didn't all go wandering off in all directions like mallard ducklings do.

Gadwall and ducklings, Marshside

Gadwall ducklings, Marshside

A crowd of mute swans dozed over on the pools by Nels Hide. I could see the pair of black swans but no sign of any cygnets, scarcely surprising as I could only see the tops of the adults' heads in the tall grass.

A crowd of black-tailed godwits, glowing rusty red in the light, loafed and twittered on a grassy bank over by the Junction Pool. Closer to hand the redshanks and lapwings on the marsh were joined by avocets, a few of which seemed to be sitting on nests. A rather magnificent ruff with a combination of a snow white ruff with a bright ginger crown, flew a few yards before disappearing out of sight in the grass.

Black-tailed godwits, black-headed gulls and tufted ducks at the Junction Pool

There was a crowd of black-headed gulls at the Junction Pool with a few pairs of tufted ducks and a few coots and mallards. 

Pyramidal orchid, Marshside

As I walked over to Sandgrounders I kept an ear on the singing skylarks, whitethroats and sedge warblers and an eye on the verges and banks for any signs of bee orchids. I was probably a week late for the flowers but I could see no sign of leaves or stems where I saw them flowering last year, nor where they were the year before. I had the consolation prize of a few clumps of pyramidal orchid. Here and there the verges were pink with restharrow or yellow with mustard and vetchlings. The dewberries have bounced back from last year's strimming and the number of flowers bode well for a good crop of my favourite wild fruit, I can never resist picking one or two when I walk past.

Dewberry, Marshside

The large pool by Sandgrounders was almost wall to wall Canada goose. A few pied wagtails, including a couple of youngsters, flitted by the banks, a couple of coots barged their way by and a cormorant preened on the corner of an island. Even a loafing great black-back looked cowed by the crowd.

Juvenile black-headed gulls, Marshside

There wasn't a crowd at Sandgrounders but there was plenty about. Most of the young black-headed gulls were at the flying stage though with varying degrees of confidence or competence. There was still a handful at that stage of growth and moult where they might be mistaken for some exotic plover flown in unexpected. The large gulls don't seem to go through a stage where they show they're related to waders.

Juvenile black-headed gulls, Marshside

Tufted ducks and a rather stroppy avocet, Marshside

Pairs of tufted ducks and shelducks cruised around, much to the annoyance of the avocets which were ready to take exception to everything and anything. As ducks go tufted ducks are fairly easy going but a couple of times one of the drakes had to snap back to put an avocet back in its box.

Tufted ducks and a rather stroppy avocet, Marshside

Tufted duck and a rather stroppy avocet, Marshside

There was plenty of excuse for the avocets: there were a couple of dozen youngsters about and they were wandering freely as they fed on the pools and creeks. They weren't quite ready for flying but didn't have long to wait by the look of them.

Juvenile avocet, Marshside

Juvenile avocet, Marshside

Juvenile avocets, Marshside

Juvenile avocets, Marshside

Black-headed gulls, Marshside
The crouching posture of the two birds on the left is a threat display.

I hadn't walked thirty yards from Sandgrounders when I found a bee orchid growing on the bank. I was glad to have found one, they are rather lovely.

Bee orchid, Marshside

Bee orchid, Marshside
Same plant, different side.

Juvenile avocets, Marshside

Further along there were more avocets in the creeks and drains of the marsh including a couple of pairs of very young birds closely supervised by their parents. A pair of tufted ducks had a crowd of ducklings, including a couple of mallards that had either been sneaked into the nest as eggs or tagged along for the ride as ducklings. Ducks are given to laying eggs in other ducks' nests, it's a sort of insurance policy.

Lapwing attacking a black-headed gull, Crossens Marsh
I'm surprised I managed to get this much of the fast-moving dogfight in the frame.

The avocets weren't the only anxious parents chasing away intruders. Black-headed gulls harassed large gulls, literally battering them about the head as they flew by, and lapwings harassed any black-headed gulls that flew too close.

Over on the outer marsh there were little egrets, shelducks and avocets on all the pools. Meadow pipits, skylarks, linnets and goldfinches flitted about, a few mipits and skylarks sang. A couple of reed buntings had beaks full of insects as they flew by. By far the most conspicuous birds out there were the swifts, over a hundred of them and all of them flying low over the marsh.

Crossens Inner Marsh

I decided to stay on the inner side of Marine Way. Looking over at Crossens Outer Marsh anything that wasn't little egrets was starling and there weren't any geese in sight. The inner marsh was busier, Canada geese had groups of large fluffy goslings in tow, the non-breeding black-headed gulls and some of the more precocious youngsters loafed on pools, coots and avocets supervised small youngsters and the young lapwings were nearly full-sized.

Thick-legged flower beetle on hawkweed

The wind died down and it became warmer. Whitethroats sang in elderberry bushes, wrens sang in patches of brambles. By the time I got to the water treatment works and its teeming swifts the hayfever was kicking in so I called it quits. I'd spent more than a couple of hours nosying about so I didn't feel too guilty about folding early. It had been a good walk and there was no need to spoil it. I walked into Crossens, got the bus back into Southport and had one of those eventful train journeys that starts with a slight delay while the police detain a suspect then meets a succession of red signals all the way back.