Leighton Moss

Greylags and teal

I woke early with ambitious plans I decided I hadn't the energy for so I set off a bit later than planned for to get myself an old man's explorer ticket. A harbinger of the day was the seven very vocal buzzards that floated high overhead as I arrived at Humphrey Park Station.

I got myself my old man's explorer ticket and got the Barrow train, as usual staying on to Ulverston and getting the train back to Silverdale so's I could have a look at the estuaries en route. The coastal pools at Leighton Moss were packed with avocets and black-headed gulls, a male marsh harrier patrolled the trackside reeds, a great white egret posed by the poolside. It was low tide and all the gulls and waders must have been way down the estuary as we crossed the Kent at Arnside. The saltmarsh on the other side was bone dry with just a few carrion crows dotted about. As we crossed the Leven the scores of eiders on the river and its mudbanks ignored the train while the cormorants basking with their wings open watched it go by.

Lesser black-backs, Ulverston Station 

The pairs of lesser black-backs just outnumbered the pairs of herring gulls at Ulverston Station and there was a lot of activity hidden by architectural furniture that looked suspiciously like nest-building. I had quarter of an hour to wait for the train back so I watched them while listening to the blackcap and robins singing in the trackside trees.

On the way back there were a lot of little egrets with yet more eiders on the inland side of the bridge over the Leven. Not for the first time I spotted a coal tit visiting a nest in the station wall at Cark. Oddly, though the saltmarsh between the Kent and Grange-over-sands was bone dry the golf course was still half-flooded. The little egrets on the heronry (egretry?) at Meathop looked a bit busy.

Black-headed gull

At Silverdale the robins, blackbirds and a song thrush were singing and a nuthatch called from the trees on the golf course. The feeders at the Hideout were quiet, even the robins weren't spending much time mugging the visitors. The trees and bushes were far from quiet, the chiffchaffs making the most noise though the wrens and robins were trying their best. As I walked down to Lilian's Hide the first of the many willow warblers and Cetti's warblers of the day sang by the path.

The small black-headed gull colony on Lilian's was in full swing. There's only space for about a dozen nests on the rafts and it was a fractious standing room only. Most of the noise was provided by small groups of squabbling dabchicks over the other side of the pool. A couple of pairs of mallards and gadwalls dabbled in the shallows, a couple of pochards drifted in and out of a loose raft of tufted ducks, greylags sat on nests half-hidden in the reeds, a couple of mute swans drifted about in the reeds and disappeared into the channel beyond. I could just hear a bittern booming over the conversations in the very busy hide.

Dabchicks
Threes a crowd.

Catching a bit of shade in the reedbeds

The path to the reedbeds was almost as busy as the hide. Which didn't stop me hearing my first reed warbler of the year or seeing my first dragonfly of the year, a large red damselfly. The bittern boomed again so I didn't think I was imagining things.

The pool at Tim Jackson's Hide was relatively quiet, there weren't the crowds of teal and shovelers that were features earlier in the year. A pair of shovelers drifted about on one side of the bund, half a dozen teal dozed on the bund with a pair of greylags and a pair of oystercatchers.

At the Griesdale Hide 

I looked in vain for any hirundines over the reedbeds as I walked to the Griesdale Hide. Plenty of black-headed gulls and a couple of buzzards riding the thermals on the distant escarpments but no hirundines. There were plenty of warblers — reed, Cetti's and willow — and a few reed bunting singing in the background. I'd almost reached the hide when an osprey flew overhead, powering its way to the bay to get a bite to eat.

Marsh harrier 

Again, the crowd scenes were in the hide not the pool. It was nice to see a crowd of goslings with a pair of greylags. They were quickly shepherded out of plain sight when a male marsh harrier drifted over. A female made an appearance then drifted over towards the causeway.

Heading back through the reedbeds

The walk back was serenaded by warblers, and the occasional squeal of water rails, and accompanied by mallards and robins which evidently were convinced I was carrying food for them. As I'd forgotten to pick up any for myself we all had a lean time of it. 

Drowned willows 

Any hopes of seeing the marsh tits I hadn't seen on the way out were dashed. The past few visits I've struck lucky at the last minute by bumping into one by the visitor centre or the station but not today. The two British chickadees, marsh and willow tits, are both very secretive this time of year. Not least because there's every prospect that they'll get turfed out of their nest hole by a great tit or blue tit if they're not careful.

I wandered back to the station where the blackbirds, goldfinches and chaffinches competed for attention in the trees and the titmice were almost furtive. It has been a very productive day — I'd seen almost fifty species even before I arrived at Leighton Moss — and I was ready for my tea.