Lytham

Linnets

It was threatening to be a fine, sunny day and I had far too many options for doing something with it, and the very real danger I might not do anything at all. I got the train into town, bought an old man's explorer ticket and decided I'd head for the Fylde coast. I keep passing through Lytham without stopping to look at the Ribble Estuary here, today seemed like a good day to rectify this. I could spend an hour or so there and then move on in a dawdly sort of fashion.

The trains behaved beautifully and I was surprisingly soon walking down to the promenade. The tide was high and the marsh was wet and filled with skylarks and linnets. Every so often a cock linnet would strike a pose on a bit of driftwood and sing, the skylarks were only practise singing, rarely going above head height.

Lytham Jetty

There looked to be a lot of gull and wader activity on the river so I walked down to the end of the jetty to see what was about. Most of the gulls in town had been herring gulls, most of the gulls on the river were black-headed gulls. The tide must have been on the turn: parties of a dozen or so redshanks were starting to fly down stream. There were lots more of them, plus a handful of curlews and some little egrets, with the gulls on the muddy nearside bank. The heat haze made most of the masses of birds on the far bank indistinguishable. I could pick out a few cormorants, mistake a few bits of tree as cormorants, and mistake cormorants for bits of tree. The white shapes were gulls and, using the cormorants for scale, most of them were probably black-headed though I shouldn't like to swear on it. The lines of silhouettes fringed brownish grey could have been any number of things. A skein of pink-footed geese that flew low overhead and out into the estuary were mercifully dead easy to identify.

River Ribble
Redshanks, black-headed gulls, curlews, herring gulls and little egrets

Walking back up the jetty I stopped to watch a reed bunting singing from the top of a stick. As I turned to resume the walk a small bird shot from under the jetty, flew down a few yards and disappeared under the jetty and out of sight. It repeated the trick a few minutes later when a dog romped down the jetty. From such brief glimpses I couldn't be sure of its identification, instinct said rock pipit but it had to have big question marks against it. Unlike the pied wagtail bouncing round the windmill just down the way.

Reed bunting

Lytham Windmill

As I walked past the windmill a handful of linnets and a couple of meadow pipits flew past. For some reason I glanced down and there was a rock pipit at my feet. It noticed I'd noticed and was off like a shot. I checked to make sure it hadn't tied my bootlaces together.

Winter Hill over the Ribble Estuary

Little egret

I walked down and dropped onto the path that runs by the Main Drain. It was squelchy underfoot but not terribly so and the worst stretches were pools of cleanish water in grass. Linnets and reed buntings flitted about and sang in bushes. A little egret shrimped in a little pool by the path. The tide was definitely ebbing now and the muddy banks of the drain were lined with teals and redshanks. A couple of times I had to apologise to them as the path approached the drain too close for their comfort. It was warm and sunny but even so I was surprised to see a peacock butterfly, my first butterfly of the year, fluttering about the rough grass. 

Teal

Teals

I'd been seeing shelducks, carrion crows and a couple of buzzards on the marsh beyond the drain. They were easier to see as I walked back along the path on the terrace above the marsh. Way out, over towards Warton Bank I think, a couple of long white necks could be seen poking out of the marsh. At that distance I couldn't be sure if I was looking at the neck of a great white egret or a whooper swan until one bird obligingly walked out into a patch of open water, the long white neck trailing a feather mattress behind it.

Main Drain and, beyond, the River Ribble

I'd bumped into a couple of birdwatchers on the jetty and I bumped into them again here. They were looking for some avocets that had been reported on the river. By this stage they'd found them but looking at them through the heat haze through their telescopes was being challenging. They told me where to look and I could definitely see a small group of white shapes on the far bank and they definitely looked smaller and more graceful than the gulls — black-headed gulls? — to the side of them. I couldn't definitely identify them as anything until they flew a few yards down the bank. Heat haze or no heat haze, the black markings on the white wings jumped out even at this distance.

I wished them luck and walked on until I found a bench and had a sit down. I had a decent view of the marsh and it occurred to me that there are worse ways of spending an hour or two than sitting on a bench in Spring sunshine scanning a stretch of salt marsh. So I did. There were a couple of groups of geese, a handful each, a few hundred yards out. The group of Canada geese were unmistakable. The balance of probability was that the grey geese were pink-feet but at this distance with the light behind them I couldn't be sure they weren't tundra bean geese or Russian white-fronts, groups of both of which have been kicking about the Ribble Estuary lately. A buzzard drifted in and sat on a tree trunk. A female marsh harrier floated over the distant upstream marsh, it's surprising how that golden splash on the forehead catches the sunlight even that far away. I hoped to see the ring-tailed hen harrier the other chaps had seen but I had no luck. I couldn't feel sorry for myself as I spotted a merlin perched on a tree trunk downstream from where I was sitting. The birdwatching was unspectacular but quietly productive and there are worse ways of spending an afternoon.

I asked myself if I wanted to walk down to the station and wait for the train to Blackpool South with a view to a bit of sea watching at Starr Gate or the Preston train with a view to getting off at Poulton-le-Fylde for a nosy at Skipool Creek. I checked the train times and decided against. I got the bus into Blackpool and took a circuitous route home. Watching a Pennine sunset I reminded myself I haven't done any hill walking yet this year.

On Lytham Windmill
Spot the starlings.