Starr Gate

Starling

I'm trying to avoid starting paragraphs with "I" and I'm making a bit of a Horlicks of it. I seem to have been doing a lot of woodland walks lately so I thought it was time for a bit of seawatching at Starr Gate. I got myself an old man's explorer ticket then found the Barrow train was cancelled. This was a blow because I needed it to make the connection with the Blackpool South train at Preston. I didn't have a long wait for the Blackpool North train but that arrives at Preston five minutes after the Blackpool South train leaves and that's an hourly train. (For those of you not in the know: the train services approach Blackpool in a pincer movement from the North and South, Blackpool Central having been axed despite the recommendations of Dr Beeching.)

Anyway, I got the train to Preston through landscapes looking more August than May and got the 68 bus from Preston to Starr Gate. Even with the delay due to roadworks I arrived ten minutes earlier than I would have on the next train and it gave me a chance to see how easy it is to get to Warton Marsh, one of those places that keep cropping up in bird reports 

Lytham St Annes Coastal Dunes 

I got off the bus and had a wander round the dunes. Linnets and meadow pipits flitted about, a couple of cock linnets singing from the tops of marram grass. It was very warm and the sky was cloudless. I'd arrived an hour after high tide and there was enough beach for the sunbathers and paddlers.

St Annes beach

I walked over to Starr Gate, found a seat at the top of some steps in the sea wall and settled down for some seawatching. I've said this before but I'll say it again, seawatching involves looking at a wide, open expanse for things that are probably not there. At first glance it was empty open sea. I quickly got my eye in and found the rafts of herring gulls and lesser black-backs a few hundred yards out and the herring gulls or lesser black-backs flying the best part of a mile away. 

From my seat at the top of the steps

For a long time that was all there was, try as I might to find anything else bobbing on the water. All the while I was accompanied by a crowd of starlings that were scrabbling about the sea wall. There seemed to be a light passage of swallows and large whites flying inland. There was enough of a balmy Southern breeze to stop it being uncomfortable. Just as I was starting to fidget the sunlight caught the orange on the head of a gannet at least a mile out, it was otherwise just a large white something flying by. Ten minutes later four Sandwich terns were half a mile closer, identifiable at this distance by seeming to have no back end.

Herring gulls
This was as close as they were coming in today.

By the time I'd called it quits I hadn't had the most productive seawatching session I've had here but I'd added gannet and Sandwich tern to the year list.