Wirral

Goosander, West Kirby 

It was a dull, grey, mizzly sort of a day so I went to the seaside.

A black redstart's been bobbing about Meols the past few days so I thought I'd look out for that as well as catching up with a few waders. A report this morning had it on a rooftop near Meols Station so I decided I'd get off there, see if I could spot the redstart then wander along the prom to Leasowe Lighthouse and see what was around before moving on to someplace else. I particularly wanted to get a lot of walking in today because the past few days the leg joints have been Hell and the stiffness needs walking out.

I got off at Meols and glanced over to the anglers' lodge next to the station, expecting the usual square root of nothing at all. The three cormorants cruising about can't have been popular with the anglers over the other side.

Meols was filled with singing robins, woodpigeons, great tits and blackbirds. Goldfinches twittered about, spadgers chunnered in gardens, herring gulls flew overhead and I couldn't see any likely candidate for a black redstart. Which saved me the embarrassment of staring intently at somebody's rooftop while wishing I didn't have to leave the binoculars in the bag. It's not unreasonable to think a black redstart might be around here, in Germany they call them house redstarts, to differentiate them from the common garden redstarts. The first ones I ever saw were nesting in a derelict mill, long since gentrified, in Manchester City Centre.

Meols beach at noon

The walk down to the prom wasn't as long as I remembered, then I realised I'm usually doing this stretch of the walk after walking over from Wallasey or Leasowe. The tide was incoming but still low with big stretches of exposed mud for the hordes of redshanks, knots and oystercatchers and the supporting cast of herring gulls, black-tailed godwits, curlews, shelducks and turnstones. A few pied wagtails skittered about the seawall with the turnstones. It was an age before I found any dunlins in the crowds and there weren't many of them. I found a distant greenshank before I found any of the dunlins. I hadn't quite appreciated just how dismal the light was until I saw the settings the camera was offering me when I started taking photographs. It was a day of perpetual twilight.

Redshank

Turnstones 

Turnstones 

Cormorants 

I walked along the revetment to the groyne, checking the grassy bank every so often, just in case the black redstart had come this way. (It did, but I didn't see it, it was reported in the area where the prom meets the revetment about an hour after I passed that way.)  Robins sang and pied wagtails bounced about but they were the only small songbirds I was seeing.

Walking to the groyne

Just past the groyne I bumped into some pied wagtails fly-catching on the revetment wall. One made me look more than twice, it was a male with a significantly paler grey back and sides to the other male in the group but not nearly anything like the clean silver grey of a white wagtail. My rule of thumb is that if I'm getting a good side-on view and can't be sure it's a white wagtail within ten seconds then it's a pied wagtail. 

Pied wagtail 
A pale individual but I don't think pale enough to be a white wagtail. 

Pied wagtail
An extremely dark bird, no question about him.

Incoming tide at the groyne

Looking over to Wallasey and Liverpool 

Beyond the groyne the tide was rushing in despite its being more than an hour to high tide. Scores of oystercatchers huddled on receding mudbanks until the water reached their ankles before flying off into the Dee Estuary. The herring gulls and lesser black-backs waited until the sea floated them off; a few flew inland to join their fellows on the industrial estate, most were content to loaf on the water.

Blackthorn 

I climbed up the revetment and dropped down into Leasowe Common where a Cetti's warbler singing in the reeds by the pond was competing with the combined efforts of the robins and greenfinches in the trees. Chiffchaffs bounced through the willows in the company of long-tailed tits and great tits and a couple assayed a bit of song. Half a dozen mallards appeared and disappeared like magic into the reeds while moorhens played peekaboo in the margins. 

Carrion crows
It's not just the waders come inland for the high tide roost.

I'd been hearing redwings but it wasn't until I was walking past the paddock by Lingham Lane I saw any. A mixed flock of thrushes was busy in one corner, equal numbers of redwings and blackbirds with a couple of song thrushes. One of the redwings was darker than the others, I first saw it front-on and almost mistook it for another song thrush the spotting on its underpants being so dense and the background colour an orange shade of buff. This was a bird from Iceland, the subspecies coburni. It's been a couple of years since I've identified one, I've never knowingly seen groups of them though that's probably my lack of fieldcraft rather than a lack of Icelandic redwings.

Much to my surprise, the singing greenfinches, goldfinches and dunnocks singing by the lighthouse were joined by another Cetti's warbler.

Oystercatchers, curlews and black-tailed godwits shared Kerr's Field with teals, woodpigeons and pied wagtails. I had a good look round just in case my first wheatear of the year was about. No wheatear but I found another mid-grey male pied wagtail to puzzle over. It'll be a couple of weeks before these fields become a magnet for passage migrants. I had a quick look at the last field before the drain and found some more oystercatchers, woodpigeons and pied wagtails. And my first silvery-backed male pied wagtail of the year.

I got the train from Moreton to Manor Road and walked down to the lifeboat station. If the tide was coming in it should be pushing waders into the salt marsh close to the promenade. The tide may have been in according to the tide tables, it looked like it had no intention of doing so on the ground. It lapped the mud a hundred yards out and couldn't wait to run away again. I watched the distant shelducks, redshanks and curlews in the gloom and the little egret rummaging about in the marsh and pondered the complete lack of linnets or pipits out there. All the pied wagtails were following the lawn mower on Parade Gardens.

Hoylake Beach

It was a shorter walk to the bus stop than the station and the bus to West Kirby was due in a few minutes so I got that. (The Saveaway I'd bought includes both bus and rail.) I got myself a cup of tea and a pastie and sat by the marine lake for a bit before having the walk around it.

West Kirby Marine Lake, Little Eye and Hilbre on the horizon

There were fewer turnstones and redshanks about the promenade than on my last visit but the tide was very quickly on the ebb this time, they had a lot of estuary to play on. A mute swan cygnet, nearly all moulted white now, loafed by the jetty with a bunch of black-headed gulls. The herring gulls around the marine lake were busy picking mussels and cracking them on the path by dropping them from a height. They were careful not to go high enough for another gull to be able to swoop in a grab the prize before they could.

Dee Estuary 

I left attempting the identification of the distant waders until I was walking the seaward path, the cormorants and brent geese were easy enough to pick out though. The lake was fairly quiet, the only ducks being a pair of goosanders and a goldeneye over the way and a pair of mallards dabbling by the boatyard.

Redshanks, knots and oystercatchers 

There were masses of redshanks and oystercatchers on the estuary and they were making plenty of noise as they set about feeding. The high tide was but a memory and most of the waders smaller than a redshank were unidentifiable dots in the gloom. Mercifully for my morale a handful of dunlins skittered about the mud near the path.

Dunlin

North Wales 

Dee Estuary on the left, marine lake on the right

A dark band of birds followed the retreating tide to the channel of the Dee. Most were oystercatchers with redshanks tagging along behind. I almost missed the two grey plovers dashing about the crowd, it was the sudden darts and stops that put me onto them. The distant sound of ancient tramp steamers was provided by the scores of brent geese grazing on seaweed-covered rocks.

Goosander

The pair of goosanders very obligingly stayed on this side of the lake and came quite close to the path as they were fishing. The goldeneye turned out to be a pair of goldeneyes.

Goosanders

Goosander

Goldeneyes 

I was halfway round the lake when I realised the joints had stopped hurting and I was walking freely. Job done in more sense than one. I completed the walk and got the next train back to Liverpool. Unfortunately I just missed the direct train home. It was now that stupid couple of hours where Northern provides trains between Liverpool and Warrington and Manchester and Warrington that don't get into Warrington until the connecting service has left. I hung around for the Cleethorpes train, got off at Urmston then got the next train to Oxford Road and stayed on to get back home, like you have to. The journey back made a longer day of it than it already was but I wasn't going to let it spoil a surprisingly good day out.

West Kirby Marine Lake