Dreich

The morning began deceptively sunny but decidedly cooler than it has been. The rain, when it came, was like stair rods. The great tits and spadgers on the feeders disappeared back into cover with the blue tits and long-tailed tits that had been bouncing round in the sycamores. The change in the weather has coincided with there being enough leaf fall for me to be able to see who's rattling the twigs.

The usual fourteen black-headed gulls were loafing on the school playing field. My working assumption is that they're the same birds every time. I can't prove this: they're all of them without rings and don't have any obvious distinguishing marks in their plumage. It's not an unreasonable assumption, though, most of the ringed black-headed gulls I've reported haven't moved very far from where they were first ringed. It's a novelty to find one that's come over from Russia or Latvia. Nearly all of the gulls I see were ringed as part of the Waterbird Colour Marking Project which has a nice easy online form for reporting sightings and finding out more about the individual concerned.

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It occurred to me the other day as I was hanging about waiting for a late-running train that on the quiet I do a lot of my birdwatching this way. There are stations where, weather permitting, this is an absolute pleasure: watching waders on the Exe at Starcross; listening to a cirl bunting singing at Dawlish Warren; little egrets at Kent's Bank; skylarks and geese at New Lane; the rookery at Burscough Bridge; and the estuary birds at Foxfield, amongst very many others. Then there are the big city stations where you're grateful if you see a pigeon. Still, it set me thinking.

Carrion crow, Humphrey Park 

My local station's Humphrey Park so it's unsurprising I'll have recorded a lot of bird sightings there. More surprising is that I've seen fifty species of birds there over the years, something I wouldn't expect from a suburban halt. (Mind you, if you asked me to guess my garden list I'd say off the top of my head it would be around thirty, it's actually fifty-nine).

These are the tallies I've got from some of the stations I find myself loitering about. (I've excluded a lot I can't disentangle from the surrounding area.)

• Altrincham 21
• Appley Bridge 34
• Barrow 37
• Bidston 32
• Birkenhead North 34
• Blackpool North 6
• Blackpool South 9
• Bolton 21
• Carnforth 35
• Chelford 27
• Chester 21
• Foxfield 31
• Gathurst 32
• Kent's Bank 32
• Leeds 11
• Liverpool Lime Street 7
• Liverpool South Parkway 37
  (most of this is accounted for by the bird-rich embankments on the lower Northern Line platforms)
• Manchester Oxford Road 36
  (having the Castlefield canal basin with its trees and open water nearby makes a big difference here)
• Manchester Piccadilly 21
  (this came as a surprise!)
• Meadowhall 20
• Preston 22
• Radcliffe Tram Station 29
• Rochdale 25
• Sheffield 20
• Southport 27
• Starcross 21
• Stockport 19
• Warrington 25
• Wigan Northwestern/Wallgate 18
  (I was surprised this was so low, there's always something about, it turns out to be always roughly the same something)

I think the difference between Piccadilly and Lime Street is the open areas a few hundred yards away from Piccadilly with the Medlock and Rochdale Canal passing close by.

I guess it's worth not sitting around moping at the train timetables when you're left hanging about at the station.