Martin Mere

Ruff and pintail

It was a milder, cloudy day and all of a sudden it was like the woodpigeons on the school playing field never left. This year's November exodus wasn't as marked as earlier years, and a pair bred locally, but the numbers have still been well down. There was also a fair old sprinkling of them along the trackside as the train took me to Burscough Bridge.

I'd been woken early by the hairy alarm clock which was unfortunate as the last time I'd checked the time before I finally got to sleep it was ten to five. I assumed she wanted her breakfast, it turned out she just wanted the bed to herself so for once I had some tea and toast before setting out early.

Red Cat Lane 

From Burscough Bridge I walked down Red Cat Lane to Martin Mere. Once I got out into the open farmland I started feeling the cutting edge of the wind. The calls from skeins of pink-footed geese flying overhead made it feel colder. Black-headed gulls skittered about the fields, common gulls and woodpigeons foraged on the ploughed land, rooks and jackdaws made a racket in the trees. Ones and twos of fieldfares flew across the road and over the fields, a couple each of redwings and corn buntings kept their distance in the hedgerows over the other side of the fields. Beyond them a tractor sent up a crowd of unidentifiable small birds. I kept hearing pink-footed geese on the ground but couldn't see them.

Pink-footed geese 

As I turned the bend of the road just after Crabtree Lane I spotted a couple of cattle egrets in the field of sheep by the paddocks just before they spotted me and flew off into the next field. I still can't get my head around cattle egrets being regular parts of the Lancashire birdscape. I found the pink-footed geese, they were a couple of fields away on my side of the road. What appeared from a distance to be a very roughly ploughed field was about five hundred geese.

Goldfinches

A mixed flock of goldfinches, blue tits and long-tailed tits bounced about in the alders along the pedestrian entrance to Martin Mere while great tits and chaffinches busied themselves in the undergrowth. I spent some time checking for siskins, redpolls or bramblings, just in case, and didn't find any.

The mere

The mere was heaving with wildfowl and waders. Just in front of the Discovery Hide there were dozens of whooper swans, mallards and greylags and smaller numbers of shelducks, tufted ducks, pintails and pochards. Further out there was yet more of the same, swans and greylags in their hundreds, together with wigeons and shovelers. 

Whooper swan

Mallards, pintails, shelducks and black-tailed godwits

Pintail

Pochard

Greylag and whooper cygnet

Ruff

Ruff

Black-tailed godwit

Ruff

Lapwing

Ruff

Ruff, the same bird as in the last picture, just to prove there's a front end to it

Over on the far bank hundreds of wigeons jostled with hundreds of lapwings and the field just beyond was a sea of pink-footed geese. Ruffs and black-tailed godwits ferreted about on the bank in front of the hide or dozed on the islands with assorted ducks and lapwings. On one of the islands far out a great black-back dwarfed three cormorants — the books tell you that the cormorant is bigger but most of its length is neck and tail, most of a great black-back is hefty fuselage.

Pintails, black-tailed godwits and shelducks

Ruff and black-tailed godwit

I looked around for the snow goose that's apparently still hanging around. I got a bit giddy at the sight of a big white farm goose but put it down to pack of sleep. The snow goose was hiding in plain sight way over on the far bank.

Heading for the Kingfisher Hide as was

A sken over the mere from the Raines Observatory added nothing to the day. Crowds of whoopers, greylags and pintails were gorging themselves on potatoes at the Hale Hide and it was dead quiet at what used to be the Kingfisher Hide.

Teal

It was busy with people and birds at the Ron Barker Hide. The draw for the people was the ring-tailed hen harrier spotted first thing in the morning and the owls and raptors that have been a feature of this week's afternoons. The birds were a hundred or so teal on the pool in front of the hide, a little egret in the sluice in front of the hide, a great white egret in the drain that runs off to become Langley's Brook and a dozen Canada geese feeding in the long grass. A male marsh harrier rose up and floated over the distant reeds, a couple of female/immature marsh harriers floated in from the fields beyond  to join it.

Little egret

The sun had flirted with the idea of coming out to play but it was now becoming a very dull and cloudy afternoon. I wandered back, looked at the trains and decided to take the long walk around the perimeter of the reedbeds and thence to New Lane. My knees weren't convinced but the new boots needed christening. The finches and tits were still in the trees by the entrance and a grey wagtail preceded me along the muddy path.

Reedbed walk 

Pink-footed geese

The hoped-for reedbed birds turned out to be blackbirds, black-headed gulls and dunnocks. It was a bit late and gloomy to expect to see much by the water treatment works fence but at least I added a chiffchaff to the day's tally. Another was calling insistently from the trees by the path further along. Hundreds of pink-feet passed overhead heading for feeding time on the mere.

Leaving the reedbed walk 

I left the reedbeds and walked along the footpath round the rough grazing to the railway line. I hadn't gone far when a ring-tailed hen harrier floated across the field and over the reedbeds. I traced its progress by the lapwings it was setting up into flight. After a couple of minutes every lapwing on the mere was up. The harrier must have carried on its way as the lapwings started to subside, and were immediately back up as a marsh harrier came at them from the opposite direction. The marsh harrier rose and headed my way, joined by two others. Two female/immature birds and a male spent some time circling each other high over the fields before going their separate ways. They were presumably the same harriers I was seeing from the Ron Barker Hide. As I approached the stonechats' collapsed shed I noticed a pair of kestrels hunting over the field near the farm.

Heading for New Lane

I crossed the line and headed for New Lane Station. A few hundred pink-footed geese were congregating noisily in the field behind the wood, all the more noisily as a walker and his dog headed for the farm. A patch of star jelly by the path caught my eye. It's as unwholesome as it is mysterious.

Star jelly

Even late on a cool and gloomy afternoon there was a wonderfully exotic smell from the field of fennel. Hundreds of black-headed gulls squabbled over the water treatment works or loafed on the ploughed field with the dozens of lapwings. As I approached the station a dozen chaffinches took exception to me from the hedgerows before settling back into roost.

Approaching New Lane

The knees were sore, the boots were muddy and I had the good fortune to get a seat with plenty of leg room on the train back to Manchester. Which was a good end to an excellent day's birdwatching.