A day out

Great white egret, Leighton Moss

It had been another wet night and the day was filled with the promise of thunder. Cumbria looked to be in for a quieter time of it so I got me an old man's explorer ticket and headed up North. The plan was to do a hit and run visit to Leighton Moss and get the early afternoon train to Corkicle and back.

The profound change in the weather was reflected by a profound change in the birdlife I could see from the train. The wet and miserable weather prompted a lot of wet and miserable woodpigeons to sit on trackside furniture and dream of plucking acorns from the cork forests of Iberia. Carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks fossicked about in fields, pigeons sat in lines on rooftops, black-headed gulls perched on lampposts. There was a light passage of swallows heading South. The rain eased once we passed Preston but it was still grim out there.

The pools by the Eric Morecambe Hide were still dry mud though the cattle put on to graze the marsh there have done a good job of cutting up the mud so that it presents a porous surface. There was water on the Allen pool but the trees got in the way of my seeing anything on there.

I decided I'd stay on the train to Dalton and come back to Leighton Moss, which meant I'd be getting four goes at the estuaries of Morecambe Bay at different states of tide. The tide was high as we crossed the Kent at Arnside. Little egrets lined creeks on the salt marsh and hundreds of oystercatchers lined mudbanks off Grange-over-Sands. As the train approached the viaduct over the River Leven we passed a ringtail hen harrier being harassed by a couple of carrion crows. A heron and a couple of eiders sat out the tide on the island at the base of the central pillar of the viaduct. On the way back the crowds of black-headed gulls on the pond by Grange-over-Sands Station and the couple of dozen teal on the River Winster near Meathop were particularly conspicuous.

Leighton Moss 

At Leighton Moss I had an unsuccessful hunt for marsh tits and spent forty minutes at Lilian's Hide. There was an embarrassment of egrets. It wasn't so very long ago I saw my first great white egret and here was a dozen of them. Mallards loafed about in groups, the drakes halfway through mounting out of eclipse plumage. The drake teals looked to be just starting the moult, a wigeon was still in ginger eclipse plumage, and I could only find a female shoveler. The gadwalls had finished their moult and the lads were making a nuisance of themselves with the ladies. 

Great white egret

From Lilian's Hide 

I got a very busy train to Corkicle. The tide was on the ebb and black-headed gulls and curlews were moving in on the emerging mud on the Kent and the Leven. The light passage of swallows of Lancashire became a torrent in Cumbria, flying past in flocks of a dozen or so or crowding along telephone lines by farmsteads. Flocks of herring gulls rummaged about the fields of Furness and were curiously absent from Barrow, where most of the half of the crowd that didn't get off at Grange-over-Sands alighted and the train suddenly felt more comfortable.

Jackdaws and carrion crows outnumbered the woodpigeons as we headed North. Scores of black-headed gulls and dozens of herring gulls and lapwings loafed on the Duddon Estuary. The osprey's nest on Arnaby Moss had been abandoned for another year. Buzzards sat in trees, pheasants scattered from the trackside. Every so often a flock of linnets or goldfinches took to flight. I congratulated myself on identifying the couple of meadow pipits keeping pace with the train as it slowed down on the approach to Millom and had to be philosophical about the myriad mystery little brown jobs disturbed from trees and bushes elsewhere along the way. The Esk was crowded with herring gulls and Canada geese.

It seemed strange not to have the prolonged stop at St Bees where the train usually waits to swap tokens with the down train for the single track to Corkicle. The line between Corkicle and Whitehaven is still closed so the trains are scheduled to pass each other on the double tracks further down the line.

The Irish Sea near Nethertown

I got to Corkicle and swapped over to the seaward side on the way back. Oystercatchers, black-headed gulls and herring gulls peppered the rocky shoreline. The weather closed in but the rain stayed light as we passed through. Yet more corvids rummaging about in fields. Fidgety flocks of swallows settling on telephone lines. Kestrels and buzzards on telegraph poles. Goosanders on the River Ehen at Sellafield, little egrets and black-headed gulls on the River Irt near Saltcoats. A crowd of lesser black-backs and herring gulls at the waste management site outside Barrow. Next to nothing on Cavendish Dock. The ebb tide brought more eiders near to the viaduct over the Leven and lapwings to the Kent. As the light faded prematurely in the rain I kept an optimistic eye out for owls over the fields and marshes but they had more sense than to chase raindrops.

I had half an hour's wait for the Manchester train from Lancaster and a long wait at Preston as night fell. I was glad of a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge when I finally got home.