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| Pink-footed geese, Marshside |
It was going to be a warmish day so I decided I'd head out to Marshside. Unfortunately I overslept and missed the train that would give me a connection with the Southport train (the rest of the day they're timed so that one can't get into Oxford Road without the other pulling out first) so I got the train to Liverpool and went up the coast. (It's ten minutes quicker than making the connection at Salford Crescent.)
Any road up, It was bright and warm when I left home but became cloudy beyond Warrington. The sun finally burnt the mist off as the train passed through Liverpool and it was a lovely Autumn day when I stepped off the 44 bus on Marshside Road.
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| Greylags |
The marshes were green and there was water in the drains, though the pools were still shallow and Junction Pool more mud than water. Greylags, Canada geese and my first pink-footed geese of Autumn grazed while small flocks of curlews and black-tailed godwits prodded the ground. A few skylarks and a lot of starlings skittered about, the house sparrows were for staying in the gardens and hedgerows up the road.
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| Black-tailed godwit and pink-footed geese |
The lagoon by Sandgrounders was remarkably quiet. Half a dozen tufted ducks dozed on the big island, a few coots, moorhens and mallards pottered about the banks. On the marsh beyond there were a handful of wigeons and dozens of teals and a thin scattering of lapwings.
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| Black-tailed godwit |
Black-tailed godwits rummaged about in the pool at Sandgrounders. Teals and mallards dozed and dabbled, a couple of shovelers and a couple of gadwalls cruised the channels. I looked in vain for any small waders. A Cetti's warbler sang in the brambles by the hide. It all felt remarkably quiet despite the fact there were hundreds of birds out there. A juvenile great black-back cruised by, making the lapwings and starlings on the marsh jittery. Small skeins of pink-feet, rarely more than a dozen birds, passed to and fro. As did herring gulls, lesser black-backs and woodpigeons. The black-headed gulls were sticking by the car park in the hopes of picking up crumbs.
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| Black-tailed godwit I wondered what the duck was. |
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| Pink-footed geese |
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| Marshside Inner Marsh |
I walked on beside Marine Drive. Probably the same Cetti's warbler sang from the depths of a hawthorn bush on the bank and a couple of meadow pipits flew over to the outer marsh. I looked across the road and scanned round. A few dark brown heads poking above the tall grass were pink-footed geese on sentry duty. Skylarks and meadow pipits flitted to and fro. I checked every fence post just in case a merlin was sitting on one of them and found a couple of juvenile wheatears.
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| A couple of juvenile wheatears |
I carried on walking. The sunshine had brought out the butterflies and I was tiptoeing round small coppers, large whites and more wall browns than I've seen in years. Red admirals and painted ladies fluttered about the wayside brambles, common darters zipped about the rank vegetation on the bankside, migrant hawkers patrolled the pathways.
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| Small copper |
A thick black band the length of Polly's Pool was a couple of hundred black-tailed godwits. Lapwings lined the bank. At least one ruff was scuttling about the crowd, a ghostly outlier turned out to be a greenshank. I'd walked a little further along when the waders suddenly took to flight. I looked too low for the cause, the culprit was a female-type marsh harrier flying above the mêlée. Most of the waders settled back down, a dozen lapwings mobbed the harrier until it floated off stage right.
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| Buzzard |
There were more raptors over the road. A buzzard hovered over the roadside before drifting out to hover over the long grass. About a hundred yards further a hovering kestrel was putting the wind up a flock of meadow pipits. Turning back and heading on a robin ticked at me from a bramble patch and a pair of stonechats scolded before retreating into a hawthorn bush. Mallards, teals and Canada geese pottered about the inner marsh, more pink-feet flew in, a heron flew out. And I found myself tiptoeing my way through the complicated love lives of wall brown butterflies.
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| A male wall brown trying to muscle in on a mating pair |
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| Wall browns |
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| Wall browns |
I'd just passed the boundary fence into Crossens Marsh when I noticed a shape shooting low over the outer marsh. I got my binoculars onto it expecting to see the kestrel and found a merlin skimming the tops of the grass. Whatever it was hoping to flush out into the open stayed resolutely under cover.
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| Walking by Crossens Inner Marsh |
For some reason the butterflies suddenly became very thin on the ground, just the occasional passing large white or wall brown. Teals, Canada geese, greylags, lapwings and starlings fed on the inner marsh. There wasn't a lot on the outer marsh, a few distant little egrets, which had been notably absent on Marshside, and even further distant small flocks of Canada geese and pink-feet.
I was approaching McCarthy's watchpoint on the other side of the road when a small bird shot from a roadside bush into a small stand of willow scrub on the bank of the path. Luckily there's not a lot on the British List that's slim, beige at the front and foxy orange at the back so even that fleeting glance told me it was a redstart, and either a female or juvenile at that. I was looking for it when another birdwatcher toddled up, a chap I've met before from East Lancashire, and he risked life and limb to pick through the brambles on the bank to look from the other side of the willows but neither of us managed to find where it had gone.
Further along, pied wagtails skittered about and black-tailed godwits fed on the inner marsh. Over on the outer marsh small flocks of teal dabbled in the pools by the river and a couple of kestrels hovered over the marsh.
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| Crossens River Teals, moorhens and heron |
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