Wirral

Shelducks, Meols

I thought I'd best make use of the nice weather while we had it and headed over to the Wirral for a seaside walk. A black scoter had been spotted amongst the raft of common scoters offshore at Hoylake but I had no intention of going for it, the best chance of getting a good look at the scoters here is, paradoxically, at low tide when you can walk the half mile down the beach and scan the open water and even then it's a job for a telescope rather than binoculars. High tide doesn't bring the scoters any closer because there's nothing but a flat stretch of sand under the water, the mussels beds are way out beyond.

Hoylake Beach 
(That's a long with a lot of dead ivy washed up in a storm)

It was a warm, sunny day and I wondered if I was going to be overdressed. The tide had been on the ebb for a couple of hours when I turned up at the Lifeboat station at Hoylake. The beach looked as if it stretched out forever and there wasn't much about except a few distant figures with telescopes over their shoulders and a few even more distant cormorants and gulls marking an invisible tideline. There weren't even any wagtails in the marsh. Literally the only bird here was a little egret preening by a puddle. There were lots of herring gulls about but they were either going out to sea or sitting on rooftops.

Little egret

Sheldrake

Shelducks 

Shelducks 

I walked down the promenade past the tennis courts and the slipway and started to see the occasional black-headed gull on the beach, then a pair of shelducks with more in the distance. There was a crowd of shelducks on the muddy creeks opposite the seawall, nearly all in pairs and with a lot of noisy head-bobbing and suggestive nudges and winks going on. A curlew walked by and was greeted with a chorus of disgruntled chunners until it had passed by.

Herring gull 

A flock of gulls — one half herring gulls and a few lesser black-backs, the other half black-headed gulls with a couple of common gulls — loafed on a mudbank near the groyne. A couple of dozen oystercatchers loafed at the edge of a creek while a handful of redshanks skittered about and a ringed plover flew past and headed for Hoylake.

Oystercatchers 

Meols groyne

Redshanks

The wind picked up and changed direction and I was glad I had a warm shirt on. I gave the groyne a long scanning over in the hopes of getting myself an early wheatear and found a few turnstones. As always the groyne marked a change in the birdlife, this time a transition from a largely empty beach to a very busy one. Clusters of redshanks dozed by pools while a few individuals fussed about in pools and puddles. Black-headed gulls bathed and picked flies off pools when they weren't picking quarrels with each other. A greenshank flew in a joined a couple of redshanks and a black-headed gulls feeding on the mud. Further out there were more oystercatchers and curlews and more gangs of loafing herring gulls.

Redshank and greenshank 

Leasowe Lighthouse

I turned inland and dropped onto Leasowe Common to see what was about. The singing robins and wrens were immediately apparent. A chiffchaff sang in the trees over by the paddocks and great tits called from the blackthorns and hawthorns. My arrival at the edge of the reedbed coincided with the squeal of a water rail somewhere in the depths. I had no more luck finding the moorhen I was hearing or the Cetti's warbler that was singing close by. A coot was a bit more obliging. The paddocks beyond were busy with blackbirds and woodpigeons, they'll soon be busy with passing migrants and swallows. I checked for any early arrivals, just in case.

The hedgerows behind the lighthouse were similarly busy. House sparrows and goldfinches fussed about, greenfinches and starlings sang and a pair of collared doves clattered about in an elder bush.

Shovelers 

I had hopes of a wheatear on Kerr's Field. There were small crowds of woodpigeons and oystercatchers, the pools were busy with teal and shovelers and starlings and pied wagtails skittered about the muddy grass. No wheatears yet, though. But I did find an unusually early white wagtail, a nice silvery grey male hiding in plain sight amongst the pied wagtails on the far side. Which was nice.