Along the Mersey

Black-tailed godwit, West Bank

A report of a couple of scaup at Moore Nature Reserve was a reminder that I've not been there in ages so I got the train to Warrington and walked down. It's been so long since I've done this walk that despite its being a dead straight run from the station to the river and along the river down Chester Road I hared down the wrong road from the big roundabout. Twice. Still, third time lucky.

River Mersey, Warrington 

A pair of buzzards circled low over Warrington town centre, upsetting the pigeons and lesser black-backs. It was a bright, sunny morning with enough cloud about for me to take heed of the weather forecast and carry my raincoat. The river was high but still nowhere near the tidemarks on the bank from the New Year floods. Cormorants and mallards gently drifted downstream. I heard an unfamiliar call from the far bank but my efforts at identifying it were thwarted by the delivery of a load of asphalt to a road-digging gang. The first of the many mixed tit flocks of the day bounced through the trees by the river.

I dropped down onto the Transpennine Route and followed it along the old canal cut. Back gardens abut the other side of the canal. Fancy having Cetti's warblers as a garden tick! Mallards dabbled about in the canal and one pair of moorhens had young chicks. Another couple of mixed tit flocks bounced through the trees, each time it was a struggle to pick up many of the runners and riders and I was going by hearing more than by sight. The long-tailed tits were obvious enough but the blue tits, great tits and chiffchaffs were actively furtive.

The Mersey Viaduct 

At the railway viaduct I joined the path into Moore Nature Reserve. Wrens, robins and more mixed tit flocks moved through the trees. Robins, blackbirds and dunnocks rummaged in the verges while woodpigeons and magpies barged about the treetops making as much noise as possible. Perhaps in protest at having a buzzard sitting in one of the trees.

Moore Nature Reserve 

Pumphouse Pool 

I looked over Pumphouse Pool from the charred stumps that used to be Colin's Hide. I'd been seeing a few dragonflies along the way — migrant hawkers patrolling the hedgerows and the occasional common darter sunning itself on the path — but nothing like what there was here. Common darters swarmed over this end of the pool. There may have been ruddy darters out there, too, I can't tell them apart at any distance. All the darters close to the bank were common darters. A broad-bodied chaser shot across the pool, I was surprised as I'd have guessed it was late to be seeing those.

Heron

Small groups of mallards and gadwalls lurked around the edges of the pool while coots, tufted ducks, great crested grebes and dabchicks puttered about in the open water. A couple of cormorants loafed on sticks. Black-headed gulls flew over but didn't settle. I walked round to the Pumphouse Hide where I picked up a couple of shovelers amongst the mallards. A large mixed tit flock which almost had as many chiffchaffs as blue tits bounced around in the trees round the hide.

Birch Wood 

I walked through Birch Wood. Chiffchaffs squeaked, wrens and robins sang, there were yet more mixed tit flocks, every one a challenge to pick through as they bounced through the leaves and twigs. It looks like it had been a good year for both blue tits and long-tailed tits.

A flock of Canada geese sitting on the island on Birchwood Pool were in a grumbly mood. The island was fringed with gadwalls, mallards and tufted ducks.

There's a feeding station by the path to the car park. I hadn't realised this, I just wondered why there were so many small birds fussing about in the hedgerows and had stopped to let them move ahead of me which they definitely weren't doing. Great tits, chaffinches, coal tits and blue tits flitted to and fro. In the end I had to make my apologies and walk by, which didn't much fuss the great tits and coal tits.

Gadwalls 

It started to rain and I put my coat and cap on. I walked down the road and joined the path to the Lapwing Pool. This is where the scaups had been seen over the weekend. There was a chap there having no luck with them, he told me a chap who'd been in earlier had had no luck and I had no luck with them either. So I had to content myself with watching a kingfisher zip across the pool a few times while a crowd of gadwalls felt the fires in the blood welling up inside them. A couple of migrant hawkers kept tempting me to point a camera at them as they patrolled the nearby reeds, darting off at abrupt right angles whenever the possibility arose. The chaffinches, robins and great tits rummaging about by the hide were too close and too fidgety for photographs.

Moore Nature Reserve 

The showers had passed over and it was sunny as I walked down into Moore. I checked the mallards on the Ship Canal to make sure the scaups weren't hiding in plain sight. I had ten minutes' wait for the X30 to Chester, changed at Murdishaw for the 79C to Liverpool and got off just over the river by the bridge on West Bank.

Silver Jubilee Bridge from West Bank

The wind got up as I walked down into West Bank Docklands Park and the clouds and light were ominous. The high tide was starting to ebb and already on the far bank there were lines of redshanks and shelducks on the tideline while crowds of herring gulls and lesser black-backs loafed on the mud behind them. 

Redshank 

I walked round into West Bank and the rain started, big blobs of water at first then it became biblical. I tiptoed past pied wagtails on the path and watched the mallards, black-headed gulls and waders on the rocks and mud beneath the seawall. Redshanks skittered about and godwits probed the mud. The first godwit I saw was a bar-tailed godwit so I assumed the next one was until I got closer and saw it was a black-tailed godwit. All told I saw six godwits, all of them on their own well away from the others, and four were black-tailed, two bar-tailed. Which I suppose is a lesson to me to keep my eyes open and not make assumptions.

Black-tailed godwit

Redshank and black-tailed godwit
The godwit seems to have caught the grandfather of all ragworms.

Bar-tailed godwit 

Way over a mudbank not far downstream from the Millennium Bridge was awash with large gulls. Even from here in this light I could pick out the lesser black-backs and very occasional great black-backs. There were darker objects that may have been young gulls or lumps of wood. And there was one very bright ginger object with a paler head. So the ruddy shelduck was still about.

Herring gulls and ruddy shelduck 

I carried on walking onto Spike Island. The ruddy shelduck still stuck out like a sore thumb even though the crowd was dispersing as the water retreated. Teal dabbled in the mud by the locks with a couple of dozen redshanks.

The canalside was awash with pigeons and magpies and there were plenty of Canada geese and mallards but, strangely, no mute swans or coots. A pair of mute swans and their couple of full-grown cygnets loafed with a few mallards and moorhens on the large puddle that's usually a pond.

Herring gulls, lesser black-backs, carrion crows and cormorants 

I found a seat overlooking the mudbank for a closer look at the ruddy shelduck and it had gone. All the dark objects were young gulls or curlews. There was no ginger object. I'd convinced myself that I'd hallucinated it and somehow taken a photo of the hallucination when I found the bird in a crowd of black-headed gulls on this side of the bank though just as far away as before. At this point I realised I'd been holding my breath.

Black-headed gulls and ruddy shelduck 

A perfectly-staged rainbow appeared over the Millennium Bridge, the wind dropped and the rain died down. I pottered about Spike Island in the sunshine without adding anything to the day's tally.

Millennium Bridge 

The thing I always forget about getting the 110 back to Warrington from Widnes, besides their being every forty minutes, is that they arrive at Warrington Bus Station five minutes after the 100 to Manchester has left and with two minutes to run across the road for the train back home or to Urmston. There was an hour's wait for the next 100 and Forty minutes for the next train to Urmston. By the time I'd walked home from Urmston or waited for the bus and walked home from the Urmston Hotel I could get a shop in, get the next train to Oxford Road and stay on it because it becomes the train home. Which I did.