Lancashire bumper bundle

Wigeon, Banks Marsh

It was the calm day between wet'n'windy and the Sunday weather warning of gales so I thought I'd head over to Banks Marsh, stopping off along the way for a nosy at Longton Brickcroft. And it turned out to be a very nice Spring day.

Magpies, Humphrey Park 

The kids were playing football on the school field so the teenage gangs of magpies gathered in the trees at Humphrey Park Station to flirt, strut, chatter and make a nuisance of themselves to the resident carrion crows.

I got the train to Preston (my monthly travel card takes me as far as Blackrod, I got a return from Blackrod to Preston just in case I was coming back this way as it was only 70p more than the single fare) and caught the number 2 bus to Southport outside the station. It's a quarter-hour ride to the stop at Longton Brickcroft, the hard part is remembering there's a stop a hundred yards before it after the bus turns the bend.

Robin, Longton Brickcroft 

It was a busy Saturday morning at Longton Brickcroft with lots of people and their dogs taking the air. The birds weren't much fussed except for the possibility that there might be a feed in prospect. Which there often was. Even the bars on the fences have feeding trays attached to them.

Coal tits, robins and a song thrush sang in the trees by the car park at the entrance. Blue tits and great tits were investigating nest boxes, dunnocks jumped out of bushes to belt out a song before disappearing back into them, chaffinches stopped feeding on the ground to fly up to branches and sing, Spring was in the air.

Longton Brickcroft 

Mallards dozed and drifted on the lower pool with coots, a couple of mute swans, a few tufted ducks and a pair of Canada geese. Experience suggested there should be gadwall out there too. I eventually found a pair lurking in the reeds over on the other side well away from the paths.

I walked up to the top pool, passing more blue tits, great tits, robins and chaffinches and more blackbirds than you could throw a stick at. Every ten yards there would be a blackbird or robin on the path and frequently both. They'd step aside for passersby but they didn't go far and were soon back where they started.

Shovelers and scaup, Longton Brickcroft 

A female scaup's been reported on the top pool most days this week so I kept an eye open as I passed the mute swans and mallards waiting for the next passing feed. The first birds I saw on the open water were shovelers and goldeneyes, a raft of tufted ducks came into view as I turned the bend and could see the whole pond. The scaup was out there, sometimes diving with the tufties, sometimes working alone. Scaup are bigger, broader ducks than tufties but this isn't always obvious at a distance, particularly as they tend to sit very low in the water compared to the typically rectangular shape of a tufted duck. Even so, this bird seemed quite small and it was the shape of the head and bill and overall colouring that made her stand out. She also spent a lot more time underwater than the tufted ducks.

Tufted ducks, Longton Brickcroft 

Tufted ducks and scaup (right), Longton Brickcroft 

Walking back I spent a couple of minutes watching and listening to a nuthatch doing a very effective impersonation of a woodpecker.

Nuthatch, Longton Brickcroft 

Marsh Road 

I got the next Southport bus, which passed by a couple of small groups of whooper swans on the fields near Hundred End. I got off at Far Banks and walked up Marine Road to Banks Marsh. Most of the fields had been recently ploughed, a few still had the last of the cabbages beyond harvestable state. There were birds about but nearly all of them flying by. A couple of carrions crows rummaged about in one corner. Linnets, goldfinches and plenty of woodpigeons flew by. I was struck by how few gulls flew over, just handfuls of herring gulls and black-headed gulls. A flock of goldfinches bounced about the alders by the farm buildings at the end of the road and a couple of tree sparrows played hide and seek in the hedgerow by the office building.

Banks Marsh
A band of distant golden plovers. Yonder is Lytham.

It had been a breezy walk to the marsh, I felt the full force of it in my face when I climbed up onto the bund. It wasn't too fierce, though, and pleasantly mild. A few redshanks, teal and wigeons rummaged about in the pools by the bund while pied wagtails bounced about in the grass. Out in the distance the sun caught a flock of a few hundred golden plovers. Beyond them scores of shelducks, lapwings, dunlins and grey plovers fed on the marsh and further yet a few hundred starlings rose and fell on the marsh like a cloud.

Wigeon, Banks Marsh 

I turned and headed towards Banks. The skylarks were singing their hearts out and meadow pipits skittered along the base of the bund. Flocks of wigeons grazed by the drain at the foot of the bund or bathed in little pools at this edge of the marsh. Something brought all the ducks and waders up from the distant marsh and this spooked the nearby wigeons which all flew into the drain. I knew it wasn't my walking along the skyline that had spooked them because some of the wigeon that had been out on the marsh flew in to join them. The pattern of eruptions of starlings and waders from the marsh suggested there was a merlin out there but I couldn't pick one up. A bit later a flock of wigeons took flight and wheeled around, this in response to a great black-back flying in and settling to loaf on the marsh. A wigeon is a welcome meal for a great black-back but there was no drama this time.

Pink-footed geese, Banks Marsh 

All of the geese along this stretch were very distant figures on the marsh and all looked to be pink-feet. A white shape amongst them got my hopes up until a snakey neck rose up and the great white egret had a look round before disappearing into a hollow. A few skeins of pink-footed geese flew overhead from the farmland and joined the distant crowds.

Wigeons, Banks Marsh 

Wigeons, Banks Marsh
This time it was my sky-lining that spooked them off the grass and into the drain.

About half a mile along the geese got closer to the bund. A couple of dozen of them grazed on the marsh by the bund, not minding me while I kept walking but being very fidgety if I stopped to look at them. Rather than disturbing them further I moved on rather than trying to get any photos and they settled back to grazing.

A mixed flock of small birds feeding in the wet grass a bit further along caught my eye. They were flitting in and out of the tussocks and it was only when I got abreast of the flock I could properly make sense of them. Half a dozen goldfinches kept to one side while linnets and meadow pipits bustled about together. There was a lot of variation in the pipits, some cold brown and very stripey above with ice white underparts, some warm brown with warm buff underparts. One bird kept catching my eye and kept disappearing into the grass. At last it came out and got busy tussling with something amongst the roots and I got a good view of the plain brown back and thick white eyebrows of a water pipit, my first of the year.

Looking over to Crossens Marsh, with a distant Canada goose

Approaching the curve where the bund meets the Crossens I noticed a Canada goose sitting on its own out on Crossens Marsh. I've not seen many reports of the usual Todd's Canada goose this Winter, I wondered if this might be it. In the end I decided that I'd done well identifying it as a Canada goose and while it seemed to have a skinny neck I wasn't able to see anything that could ID it as a Todd's. But it was worth a look.

As I got nearer the river I could see more groups of Canada geese between the family parties of pink-feet on Crossens Marsh. There were much more geese far out on the marsh but they were unidentifiable at that distance. The only little egret of the day made a vile noise as it lurched out of a ditch and onto the marsh as I passed by.

Approaching the river Crossens 

I walked into Banks and concluded that I didn't have the legs in me to walk down the other side of the river to Crossens Marsh and thence onto Marshside so I got the bus into Southport and got the train home. It had been a very splendid day with lovely weather and I'd seen sixty-odd species of birds so I had nothing to complain about except that I hadn't had a cup of tea.

Banks Marsh