Leighton Moss

Red deer

I was due a visit to Leighton Moss, it was going to be a nice day, I got me an old man's explorer ticket and got the Barrow train North.

The trip up North was good, the train wasn't absurdly busy and ran to time. There was the usual cavalcade of corvids, pigeons and gulls along the way, I noticed more black-headed gulls floating back into towns. We passed a great white egret and great rafts of avocets and black-headed gulls as the train passed the coastal hides at Leighton Moss. I stayed on to Ulverston so I could check out the Morecambe Bay estuaries at lowish tide. A curlew, a redshank and some oystercatchers at Arnside. Only a couple of little egrets on the salt marshes. A small raft of eiders, mostly young birds accompanied by ducks and a few drakes moulting into eclipse, on the Leven. There were much more eiders inland of the viaduct on the way back, together with some very young-looking herons. 

In between journeys I couldn't work out whether or not the mass of herring gulls and lesser black-backs at Ulverston Station had been breeding on the roof or not. There was a lot of behaviour that was suggestive of it, head-bowing between partners and lots of big shoulders and wings displays at incomers, but I could see no signs of nests or their contents. It feels a bit late for large gulls to be starting breeding, if that's what they're doing.

The spadgers and blue tits were busy at Silverdale Station and a pair of pied wagtails have had a couple of youngsters which, for some reason a swallow took exception to. Perhaps they've been overly boisterous, as is the way with juvenile pied wagtails. 

Juvenile robin
A quick learner at The Hideout, the first time I've ever had to use a macro setting for a bird photo, it was too near for focus otherwise.

Round the corner at Leighton Moss the feeders at The Hideout were busy with titmice and finches. The great tits and juvenile blue tits jostled with the goldfinches, chaffinches and greenfinches and everything moved to one side when the bullfinches barged in. The adult blue tits were more circumspect, flying in, grabbing a seed and heading for cover. They were already in stages of moult, one being nearly bald and a other lacking most of its tail feathers. I had hoped to catch a marsh tit here but I didn't have any luck with them, or coal tits, here today. The young blue tits joined the robins of all ages coming into the Hideout to beg for scraps.

Brown rat

A couple of rats joined the mallards and moorhens under the feeders. I wouldn't want rats in my garden (I've had to suspend feeding the birds a few times when they've wandered in off the railway) but they're interesting critters to watch in a wild setting.

Bullfinch

Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and goldfinches sang in the trees and a Cetti's warbler sang from the undergrowth. A wren shepherded its youngsters into cover as I passed by on my way to Lilian's Hide.

Bathing mallard 

Most of the black-headed gull nests on the pool at Lilian's Hide were inferred rather than seen, the grass on the rafts and little islands towering over the gulls' heads. The calls and actions of the gulls sitting on sticks by the hidden nests suggested that there were more youngsters than could be seen from the hide.

Black-headed gull 

Coots collected in the corners of the pools, many of them with well-grown youngsters. A few greylags cruised around, similarly some tufted ducks and a great crested grebe. A pair of dabchicks fished in one corner, an eclipse drake pochard over the other side of the pool. This is a plumage I don't see often enough to be sure about what I'm seeing at first, or second, glance. Unlike the mallards and gadwalls. The reeds in front of the hide were busy with darting dragonflies. Most that I could identify were broad-bodied chasers, dwarfed by the couple of emperor dragonflies zipping about the tops. A handful of sand martins flew in and wheeled around the pool after midges.

At Lilian's Hide 

I'd been keeping an eye out for marsh harriers and was having no luck. I spotted a bird drifting high over the causeway being harried by black-headed gulls. It didn't look right for a harrier so I assumed it was a buzzard until it wheeled round and I saw the white head. Then I saw the second osprey circling high above it. The first bird floated in close enough for me to get a record shot. There are times when I miss the big lens.

Osprey

Walking through the reedbed

The walk down to the reedbed hides was accompanied by the songs of chiffchaffs, willow warblers, wrens, reed warblers and reed buntings and the boom of a bittern from somewhere over near the causeway. Blue tits and great tits scurried through the undergrowth.

At Tim Jackson's Hide 

Tim Jackson's Hide was quiet. The oystercatchers that were nesting had left, there was no sign of lapwings, shovelers or teal. But there was a crowd of gadwalls dozing in the sun. And a lot of broad-bodied chasers. There were some skimmers, too, but I couldn't get a good enough look at any of them to be sure which species. I was surprised to only see a few common blue damselflies, I hadn't seen any at all in the reedbeds. The darting shape the corner of my eye suggested was a huge dragonfly was a lone sand martin hawking a fraction of an inch above the reeds at the side of the pool.

Great black-backs, parent and child

I walked round to the Griesdale Hide, passing more singing reed warblers, Cetti's warblers and reed buntings and hearing probably the same booming bittern. There were a few gadwalls and mallards on the pool, a couple of red deer were grazing by the bank and a crowd of jackdaws passed by in a panic after a bird-scarer went off in the fields beyond. A female marsh harrier made a cameo appearance as she floated off to the salt marsh. I could only see one chick on the great black-back nest, an ambiguous pale shape behind might have been another chick.

Walking back through the reedbed

Walking back from the Griesdale Hide I was astonished to find a Cetti's warbler nest with noisy youngsters in the reeds, more than I'd been able to do with the singing adult I'd been looking for. (I hasten to add that I was staring into the reeds with my binoculars while standing on the path.) Two steps later I found my first bearded tit of the year as it called about a foot into the reeds, a fleeting sighting but welcome nonetheless.

I'm still wary about the train services up here so I headed for the half three train back to Manchester. I won't weary the reader with the adventure save to say that the line between Carnforth and Lancaster was blocked ("an incident," which is code for some poor devil having an infinitely worse day than the travelling public and a bunch of other people having an awful time of it and deserving our sympathy) and that the train I got at Lancaster after getting there by bus was the one that left Silverdale at half five. The problem, as always, being that for the Northwest North of Preston there is no Plan B. I was late home and weary but it had been an excellent day's birdwatching. And I'd missed the fire at Oxford Road Station.