Leighton Moss

Coal tits and chaffinch 

We're not into the cold, wet weather yet and I'm already walking about like I'm on dodgy stilts. After a lazy day yesterday (after a busy night) I thought I'd get some gentle exercise to get the joints moving again and used one of my complementary rail tickets for a visit to Leighton Moss via Ulverston, checking out the estuaries of Morecambe Bay along the way.

I got the Barrow train to Ulverston, travelling up on the inland side. Even so I could see that the coastal pools by Leighton Moss were heaving with ducks and waders. A quick glance from the passing train took in scores of wigeon and black-tailed godwits as well as the usual black-headed gulls and mute swans. The tide was low on the Kent at Arnside. Curlews, shelducks and redshanks took a low tide breather on the exposed mud while goosanders cruised down the main channel. Carrion crows, jackdaws and woodpigeons were much in evidence, little egrets sporadically so and the only swallow of the day came as a surprise, passing by as the train pulled out of Grange-over-sands. A sign of season's passing was the flock of common gulls in a field just before Cark. A few eiders rested up on a mudbank as the train passed over the Leven and the sudden rise in numbers of herring gulls and lesser black-backs told me we were arriving in Ulverston. I've no idea why this town is such a magnet for large gulls but I'm not going to knock it.

I had twenty-five minutes to wait for the train back to Silverdale (I could have stayed on til Dalton but that connection always feels like I'm cutting it fine). The robins at the station were in fine song and made themselves very conspicuous, striking poses on the trackway before darting back into cover to start singing again. A pair of bullfinches whistled mournfully in the trees, they're almost a fixture here but I pretend to be surprised and delighted to make sure they don't think I'm taking them for granted.

The journey back was on the seaward side. There weren't as many eiders on this side on the Leven but there was a flock of greylags grazing on the bank while shelducks and a heron foraged on the mud and a mute swan cruised on of the channels. Carrion crows, rooks and little egrets worked the salt marshes, magpies and jackdaws the fields. Shelducks and redshanks peppered the beach at Grange-over-sands and a flock of black-headed gulls littered the Kent at Arnside. Just outside Arnside the first great white egret of the day shared a field with a heron.

Coal tits and goldfinch 

There were a lot of coal tits at Leighton Moss. They outnumbered and crowded out the blue tits and great tits on the feeders by the Hideout and only the ferocious buzzing of the goldfinches as they pecked right back at them stopped them monopolising the sunflower seeds. The chaffinches, robins and dunnocks stayed on the ground to pick up the spillage from the fights. The coal tits noticed and joined them.

Teal showing it's not just the mandarin ducks that can throw abstract shapes

The pool at Lilian's Hide was heaving, mostly with coots and gadwalls but oddly no tufted ducks. A few mallards, shovelers and teal loafed about, the first of what are very likely going to be legions of wigeons and pintails cruised about and dabbled in the water. Way over by the causeway a female marsh harrier floated over the reeds before jinking down into them. As I was getting up to leave I mentioned to a lady that it was odd to see no tufted and she pointed one out to me. I felt a bit better after that, as if some cosmic balance hadn't been upset.

Coots and gadwalls but, oddly, no tufted ducks

Shoveler

Teal 

Pintail 

By the path

It was a noisy quiet walk down into the reedbeds, most of the noise provided by a mixed flock of goldfinches and siskins bustling about in the alders near the sky tower. Robins sang in the willows and a small flock of half a dozen fieldfares chacked from the treetops on the railway embankment.

Honey fungus
As you can imagine, there's no end of wet dead wood hereabouts.

Reedbeds being quiet

Walking through the reedbeds was eerie quiet and I was glad of the occasional passing crow. Then, as I approached Tim Jackson's Hide a Cetti's warbler suddenly sprang into song from one side of the path and was answered by the piglet squeal of a water rail on the other.

Great white egret

Star of the show at Tim Jackson's was a great white egret taking a stroll along the bund, much to the inconvenience of the dozing teals it kept disturbing. That really narked-off sharp version of the quack isn't one you hear often outside the rough and tumble of the courtship season. The pool was liberally sprinkled with gadwalls and shovellers, including the hybrid drake shoveler x cinnamon teal which I haven't seen for a while. And yet again it struck me how very similar it looks to an Australasian shoveler (hybrids between two species of ducks often look very similar to a third and can be the stuff of nightmare in the field). A couple of first-Winter drakes had similar facial patterns with messier versions of the vertical white crescent shaped mark on their faces but the browny greys of their heads were warm earth tones with hints of bottle green rather than the slaty blue-grey of the hybrid. One first-Winter, possibly related, did have blue-grey tones but scarcely any white on its face.

The same great white egret, unfluffed

The walk round to the Griesdale Hide was punctuated with titmice, robins and wrens. There were more shovelers and gadwalls on the pool at the hide and a dabchick kept busy fishing by the bank. Cormorants loafed in the trees and on the osprey platform (the great black-backs have long gone) and a female-type marsh harrier quartered the far end of the reedbeds near the field where a busy tractor was being monitored by flocks of crows, rooks and black-headed gulls.

Dabchick

The walk back through the reedbeds was more eventful. Cetti's warblers sang, reed buntings flitted between willow trees, a skein of about a hundred and twenty pink-feet flew overhead and a migrant hawker patrolled the reeds by the grit trays (it was late in the day for bearded tits to be on the trays but you live in hope).

Leighton Moss 

The last through train to Manchester was due five minutes after I arrived back at the visitor centre so I toddled off for that. As we passed the coastal pools I could see that I missed flocks of lapwings and groups of teal and shovelers on the way up.