Leighton Moss

Shovelers 

There was a good start to the day today with an adult yellow-legged gull landing amongst the assorted herring gulls on the school roof. It was the light catching the bright yellow of its legs as it landed that caught my eye. It's a shame it didn't turn up yesterday when it would have been okay for me to point my binoculars that way for a more detailed look at the bird. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same bird that keeps turning up at Clippers Quay on Salford Quays.

I thought I'd risk it and try and use up one of my complementary return tickets and head up North to see what was on the Morecambe Bay estuaries and have a nosy round Leighton Moss which like as not was going to be awash after the recent heavy rains.

The trains behaved impeccably. Which is atypical on a Monday. I got the Barrow train as far as Ulverston. Along the way I noticed the woodpigeons were drifting back here and there, nothing like their usual ubiquity but there were a couple of flocks of half a dozen between Bolton and Chorley. Jackdaws, rooks, carrion crows and black-headed gulls were far more in evidence.

Kents Bank

I was sitting inland, passing a huge flock of pink-footed geese on the fields below Warton Crag, mute swans on the pools by the coastal hides at Leighton Moss and both little and great white egrets roosting in the trees at Meathop. The incoming tide seemed to have driven the waders on the Kent Estuary upstream but there were plenty of black-headed gulls and mallards, all the eiders on the Leven were first-Winter and eclipse drakes. A fly-by merlin over the river Eea outside Cark was a nice trainbound tick.

River Kent at Arnside

Heading back to Silverdale there were a few little egrets on the salt marshes. There were more mallards than eiders on the seaboard side of the viaduct over the Leven. Scores of black-headed gulls loafed on the beach at Grange-over-sands and on the Kent at Arnside where the curlews waded thigh-high in the water and a drake red-breasted merganser drifted down the river.

The blue tits that got away

The floods at Leighton Moss had drained as quickly as they came and all but the Lower Hide could be negotiated in sandals. I went straight to The Hideout where the titmice and goldfinches were giving the feeders some hammer. Robins, chaffinches and dunnocks flitted about while mallards, pheasants and moorhens jostled for the spillings, which were copious as the goldfinches were at their most quarrelsome. I could hear a marsh tit but didn't actually see it until I was walking round to Lilian's Hide.

Coal tit

Dunnock

At Lilian's Hide 

Although the paths were dry the water was high. At Lilian's Hide all the ducks were scrunched up onto the bits of bank in front of the hide. For once there wasn't a single bird out on the open water.

Shovelers 

Shovelers 

There were scores of shovelers, teals, mallards and gadwalls and dozens of pintails. A few snipe scuttled about amongst the ducks.

Teal, shovelers and a snipe (centre left, about ten o'clock from the teal)

Shovelers 

Teal and gadwalls

Teal

Shoveler duck

first-Winter drake shoveler 

Moorhens pottered about in the drowned willows by the hide. A water rail squealed in the reeds and a Cetti's warbler had a short explosion of what I would say was half a song. It tried again and still didn't sing the full phrase.

Reedbed path

Robin
I'm going to have to carry a bag of mealworms or something, it gets embarrassing having to keep apologising to mendicant songbirds.

The reedbed paths were surprisingly quiet, occasional great tits, blue tits or robins in the trees and a few woodpigeons and black-headed gulls overhead. It was so quiet I kept hearing the metallic "pick" calls of bearded tits in the depths of the reeds though I didn't see a single one.

At Tim Jackson's Hide 

Tim Jackson's Hide was busy with people and the pools were busy with gadwalls, mallards and shovelers.

At Griesdale Hide 

The Griesdale Hide was just as busy with people but significantly quieter of birds, there wasn't even the usual crowd of crows and jackdaws on the fields beyond the reserve. Half a dozen cormorants loafed in the trees amongst the reeds and a buzzard soared over the hillside. A female marsh harrier floated by and disturbed a few starlings in the reeds.

Walking back to the visitor centre 

Walking back I heard a mistle thrush singing from a tree by the railway line, the weather wasn't anything to write home about but I hadn't expected it to provoke a stormcock into song. The trees between Lilian's Hide and the visitor centre were busy with titmice, chaffinches and goldfinches. I spent some time trying and failing to get photos of a pair of bullfinches extracting and eating the pips from guelder rose berries before I noticed the time and had to do a quick toddle for the last train back to Manchester for a couple of hours.

It was one of those odd sort of days where the birdwatching feels quiet but a substantial day list gets racked up.