Wirral

Shelduck and ringed plovers

After a weekend getting over the after-effects of overdosing on walking through grassy meadows, newly-mown municipal parks and fields of cereal crops I thought it might be a wise move to have a change of setting for a long walk. So I had a stroll from Hoylake to New Brighton along the Wirral Coastal Path in bright sunshine with a cold Norwester blowing in off the Irish Sea.

I made a start from Manor Road where the chiffchaffs were singing in the trees, the house martins whizzing round the rooftops and a herring gull was sitting on a nest between chimney pots. I got to the lifeboat station and headed for Meols with the wind and the sun mostly on my back — I'd have had both full in the face from different directions walking over from Meols.

The tide was out but judging by distant white horses that was going to change pretty soon. The beach between Hoylake and Leasowe gets inundated very quickly. There was a line of cormorants and unidentifiable large gulls by the water line half a mile out. A couple of curlews probed the mud slightly further in. Closer to, pairs of shelducks dabbled in muddy puddles and herring gulls loafed about in twos and threes. I almost overlooked a common gull asleep in a hollow out of the wind. A whimbrel flew in and started feeding in the middle distance, it's been a good year for them.

Pied wagtail

Nearby there were bits of movement in the patches of sea grass and plantains as pied wagtails, including a couple of primrose-faced juveniles, went about their business. I'd not walked far when I accidentally broke up a pretty vicious fight between a pair of pied wagtails, the male flying off a few yards leaving a rather dazed female to get her act together before flying off.

Ringed plovers 

Ringed plovers

There had been reports of a couple of little stints here over the weekend, reduced to one by daybreak this morning so I suspected that would have scuttled off by now. Small groups of dunlins and ringed plovers flew to and fro, settling in the shelter of patches of grass. A party of ringed plovers were scuttling about a hundred yards away from the sea wall, the three-quarter-sized youngsters looking unnervingly like Kentish plovers with white faces and sandy rings developing round their necks. A couple of dunlins wandered in from I know not where followed by another, much smaller, wader. Which was also a dunlin because it had a black belly. The size variation in dunlins is one of the major reasons why I have no confidence in identifying "peeps." I watched the plovers for another few minutes before I noticed that one of the littlies skittering about at the far end of a puddle had a scaly brown back and black legs. Which is how I added little stint to the year list.

Ringed plovers and little stint (front)

Grey plover

I'd only walked a few yards ahead when I noticed a grey plover dozing out of the wind behind a tussock of grass. I don't see grey plovers nearly often enough and certainly not in their smart Summer plumage.

Looking back over the Dee Estuary to that Wales

Catamarans at Meols

As I walked along there were fewer waders and shelducks and more herring gulls, lesser black-backs and, once I reached the creeks by the slipway, little egrets. I joined the revetment and walked down to the groyne. It seemed strange not having crowds of knots and redshanks on the mud or turnstones scuttling about in the seaweed. It seemed odder that the only birds on the groyne as the tide came in were a couple of house sparrows.

It's odd looking at the groyne from this view and not having a derelict boat in the corner

The pond on Leasowe Common 

I bobbed over the top and down into Leasowe Common where the goldfinches and linnets were twittering about in the bushes and whitethroats singing from the small trees. A reed warbler sang deep in the reeds by the pool where broad-bodied chasers zipped round the margins. The paddocks that a month ago were hotspots of passage migration were now the playgrounds of swallows and woodpigeons.

Herring gulls and lesser black-backs 

I had a quick look at Kerr's Field which was carpeted with herring gulls and lesser black-backs sitting out the high tide. They were accompanied by a lot of woodpigeons that were trying to pretend their field hadn't been invaded. I had no luck searching for stonechats or sedge warblers in the drain by Lingham Lane, just more linnets, goldfinches and whitethroats.

A melee of starlings

Starling, ready for the post-breeding moult 

I got myself a cup of tea, resisted the temptation to get a bag of chips, and picked my way through the starlings to rejoin the revetment and head towards New Brighton. The scenery for the next couple of miles was lovely but the birdwatching a lot thin on the ground. Most of the action was inland with skylarks singing over the rough and a pair of coots making a natural hazard of the putt on the fifteenth hole of the golf course.

Leasowe Bay 

Leasowe Bay 

Cormorants 

I debated walking inland into the dunes by The Gunsite then remembered the sneezing fit I had walking past the freshly down grass by Leasowe Lighthouse and decided to keep to the coast today. A few herring gulls and parties of cormorants headed out to sea ready for any pickings on the ebb tide. A dark shape caught my eye out to sea. Usually they're buoys or bits of driftwood. The distance between first and second sighting ruled out a buoy and it was moving against the current, it wasn't a cormorant and it was too big for a common scoter. The third time it bobbed up the whole head came out of the water not just the nose and I could see it was a grey seal.

Herring gull

Meadow pipits performed their parachute songs in the dunes, pied wagtails skittered about the paths, herring gulls and lesser black-backs lurked and loafed, carrion crows fossicked about on the beach and starlings fussed about on the grass inland. And so it was all the way past the lifeguard station and down the length of the King's Parade into New Brighton.

Herring gulls by Wallasey Lifeguard Station 

New Brighton 

I decided I didn't have the legs or wind for moving on to someplace else so set off back home. I just missed the train straight home, didn't fancy the wait for the train to Warrington then the wait for the train to Urmston so I got the train to Eccles via St. Helens and got the bus home after a surprisingly good day.

Shelduck and ringed plovers