Wirral

Little stint, Meols

The birding day started with the calls of common scoters on their nocturnal migration in the wee small hours before dawn. It was going to be an okay sort of day weather-wise so I headed out to the Wirral coast to catch up on waders. Little stints — still not on my year list — and curlew sandpipers have been on the beach at Hoylake and Meols all week and yesterday there was a cameo appearance by a Baird's sandpiper. That would have been a lifer for me, I did the research just in case it came back while I was there. You can live in hope.

As I sat on the train I weighed up all the swollen watercourses running through parched landscapes. Even taking into account the heavy run-off over soils baked hard over the Summer there's something seriously amiss in the water retention policies of our environmental management.

Hoylake Lifeboat Station 

It was mild and cloudy and very windy when I got to Hoylake Lifeboat Station. The tide was out but rolling in. There were lots of waders out on the mud beyond the stretch of salt marsh, the redshanks were easy enough to pick out when they flew a few yards onto their next patch of mud. The smaller waders were harder work, it wasn't the distance I was struggling with, it was the wind bashing the binoculars about. It took a good ten minutes to finally get my eye in so I could tell the dunlins from the ringed plovers, and there were plenty of both. I was glad the Baird's sandpiper had beggared off so I wasn't embarrassing myself trying to find it.

Little egret

Pied wagtails and a rock pipit fussed about by the sea wall. Black-headed gulls, herring gulls and a couple of little egrets rummaged about in the marsh. As I walked along the salt marsh receded and the waders on the mud were a little closer and a lot more easy to identify though scale was still an issue. I kept thinking I'd seen a wader small enough to possibly be a little stint then what I'd been looking at would run over to join a group of dunlins exactly the same size. Ironically, when I did actually see a fairly distant little stint I dismissed it as a dunlin until one walked past it. I would have missed a curlew sandpiper had it not been in a small flock flying across my field of vision and the white rump screamed: "Look at me!"

Grey plovers

It got easier as I approached the end of the tennis courts and the salt marsh ended and the waders came in closer. Half a dozen grey plovers, still in black-bellied breeding finery, kept their distance, as did the sanderlings moulting into Winter whites. There weren't many knots about but there were hundreds of ringed plovers. It's been a long time since I've seen so many. And of course there were hundreds of redshanks, tiger-striped youngsters and adults in varying stages of moult, patchworks of rich browns and beiges. There was an assortment of curlews ranging from three-quarter-grown youngsters with shorter, straighter bills to a huge female as big as a herring gull with a bill as long as her body. There was quite a lot of variation in the shades of brown, too, with some of them almost appearing ghostly monochrome in flight. I would have missed the sleeping whimbrel in the mix had two young curlews not barged into it.

I flitted by the chaps with their telescopes using the tennis court wall as a windbreak, so's not to get in their way. There were a few more with telescopes further up the promenade. There had been negative reports of the Baird's sandpiper this morning but don't look don't find. I'd concluded that if it was still about and was with the dunlins I wasn't going to spot it with my binoculars, even if the wind calmed down. I was happy enough having little stint bring the year list to 200, though I'd have been happier if the 200th had been that dotterel and little stint the 201st. I walked down the prom a bit and stap me vittles! there was a juvenile little stint feeding close to the sea wall, entirely unconcerned about passersby.

Little stint

Little stint, showing the white braces of the juvenile plumage

Little stint

Little stint

Little stint

Lesser black-back, great black-backs and herring gull

Herring gulls, lesser black-backs and three great black-backs loafed on mudbanks. Black-headed gulls fussed about and a couple of common gulls fossicked about in the mud in the company of shelducks. I started to see oystercatchers amongst the redshanks and a greenshank scurried about a little creek. More pied wagtails flitted about by the seawall. All in all it was quite busy out there.

Oustercatchers
A variety of stages of moult in the birds at the front: breeding plumage on the left, partial moult beginning centre, coming into Winter plumage on the right. 

Oystercatchers and a redshank

By the time I got to the end of Meols Promenade the tide had started its invasion proper, rushing into the basin by the start of the revetment. Oystercatchers flew in and settled on ever-shrinking islands. Three black-tailed godwits stubbornly carried on feeding until the water finally lifted them off the mud and they flew off inland to the pastures by Park Lane. Turnstones and pied wagtails flew onto the revetment. I kept an eye out for passage migrants, a few swallows sailing with the wind were almost my only haul today.

Black-tailed godwits being obstinate

Oystercatchers

Oystercatchers

Oystercatchers

The groyne 

Turnstones, redshanks, knots and little egrets huddled on the groyne to wait out the incoming high tide while a curlew carried on feeding by the waterside while it could and a cormorant fished for morsels brought in with the tide. A little beyond I found a juvenile white wagtail amongst the pied wagtails. Juvenile white wagtails are tricky and I dare say I've missed loads of them over the years, confusing them with some of the paler pied wagtails. There was no question with this one, pied wagtails don't get down to three, borderline two on the Kodak grey scale.

Redshanks and whimbrel

Curlew

Redshanks, turnstones, little egret and oystercatcher

It was a relief to bob over the top into the relative shelter of Leasowe Common. A few goldfinches and woodpigeons fidgeted about in the trees and robins sang from hawthorn bushes. I'd hoped a warbler or two might be in the trees round the pond but I none were to be found. 

A bit of water on the pond

It was nice to see some water back in the pond even though it was barely a couple of inches. A scan round the paddocks beyond found woodpigeons and carrion crows. A few greenfinches and house sparrows joined the goldfinches in the hedgerows behind the lighthouse.

Whitebeam

Leasowe Common 

Jays screeched in the trees by the caravan park and a loudly begging juvenile buzzard in the treetops was pointedly ignored by the adult circling low over the industrial estate. On Kerr's Field what wasn't woodpigeons was a pied wagtail.

As I waited for the train at Moreton I looked at the bird reports for inspiration for where to go next. The Baird's sandpiper was reported at Meols about the same time I was dropping onto Leasowe Common but couldn't be found again shortly after. One of the guys with the telescopes must have struck lucky. I wasn't for walking back to try my luck. A Leach's petrel had flown by Leasowe Gunsite. I wondered if there were many about. I've had good views of Leach's petrels from the mouth of the Mersey at New Brighton in these weather conditions with the wind blowing birds into the estuary so I headed thataway.

New Brighton Beach

It was high tide at New Brighton and the wind was whipping up huge white horses. Herring gulls, black-headed gulls and a few lesser black-backs floated by. I leant against the seawall and scanned further out. More gulls. Three cormorants flying in a line almost skimming the waves. The dark starling-sized birds flying over towards Seaforth were starlings. There are worse things in this life than seawatching on a sunny Friday teatime.

Herring gull

I walked down to the marine lake where dozens of turnstones and a handful of redshanks roosted on the pontoons. I sat on one of the benches and carried on my seawatching. More herring gulls. A couple of common gulls. A kittiwake, that was a nice find, they're not remotely as common in the Mersey Estuary as they are on the clifftops of the East coast and North Wales. No Leach's petrels though. The tide started to ebb. Waves of turnstones chunnered as they joined the herring gulls on the beach. A rock pipit bounced about the breakwater boulders. Starlings left their roost on Perch Rock and started fossicking about on the receding timeline by the river while more turnstones descended on the breakwaters by Perch Rock and the lighthouse.

Turnstone

Juvenile herring gull

Ironically, for once, a late-running train worked in my favour: I had a leisurely stroll over to platform 10 at Lime Street for the train directly back home instead of the usual mad dash and getting it by the skin of my teeth.