Risley Moss

Magpie, Risley Moss

After another wild and woolly night the wind calmed down a lot and the sun assayed a bit of shining. I'd had a very bad night's sleep so I thought I'd take the new camera for a walk but stick relatively near to hand. I've not been round Risley Moss since Adam was a lad, I keep going past it, I decided I'd go and have a nosey.

Waiting at the station I watched as the clouds rolled in from the West. The sky was a blank grey as I got off the train at Birchwood, turned right from the station, walked a little way then joined the path through Birchwood Forest Park.

Birchwood Forest Park 

Robins sang in the hedgerows and blackbirds rummaged round in the leaf litter by the path. A mixed tit flock was mostly blue tits and great tits with a couple of goldcrests and a coal tit. One of the goldcrests sat for this camera's first "There was a warbler there a moment ago" photo. I tried and failed to get portraits of a flock of siskins bouncing through the alders, the only times they stayed still enough for a photo they were in silhouette with a lot of twiggy stuff behind them. I was already learning just how much muscle memory I would have to unlearn: groping for handholds that aren't there, reaching forward to zoom a lens that wasn't there, compensating for front-heavy weight that wasn't there. I was still using the camera as a point-and-shoot but soon decided to change a couple of the settings. Switching off the automatic ISO setting really made a difference: I was finding it impossible to manage the depth of focus of any of the photos. I'll be taking a lot of ropey photos over the next few days as I get to grips with the new toy.

Great spotted woodpecker, Birchwood Forest Park

A bit further along I bumped into another mixed flock of blue tits and chaffinches and another, very skittish, flock of siskins. A great spotted woodpecker flew over and started drumming in the treetops by the path. I've been thinking it's been a quiet Winter for redwings so it was nice to see a flock fly low overhead. I've no idea where the five mallards flying through the park came from.

Birchwood Forest Park 

The sun came out as the path turned and followed the perimeter fence of Risley Moss. Magpies and jays chased each other through the trees, I suspect they were reinforcing pecking orders within the pirate class. A flock of blue tits and long-tailed tits bounced through a stand of trees half a dozen bullfinches were busily disbudding.

It was quieter inside Risley Moss than it had been in the trees along its perimeter. There were plenty of robins and blackbirds but it took a while to bump into the first tit flock. Chaffinches skittered about in the undergrowth away from passing dog walkers, nuthatches played hide and seek in the trees.

Risley Moss 

There was literally nothing doing at the Mosslands Hide, not even any passing woodpigeons or carrion crows.

I walked round and sat at the hide by the feeders to see what would be coming in for supper. For a while it was only a squirrel and a couple of chaffinches. Eventually a couple of great tits came in, they were the vanguard of a large mixed flock — blue, coal, great and long-tailed tits — that kept a surprisingly low profile. One or two birds at a time would fly out, grab something from one of the feeders and retreat back into cover. The long-tailed tits and a great spotted woodpecker favoured a dead branch that had been loaded with suet.

Risley Moss 

I dawdled round for an hour or so, completed the circuit as the sun set and had a twilight walk back through Birchwood Forest Park to the station. There were a lot of robins — I counted twenty-six singing birds — and blackbirds. Overhead small groups of carrion crows flew in to roost. There were so many of these small groups I became sure I was misidentifying a flock of rooks but when I got to the tree they were roosting in there they were, thirty-two carrion crows and not a rook or jackdaw among them.

Rainy day

Mute swans, Platt Fields

Another twilit day as the overnight wind abated and was replaced by pouring rain. The spadgers rushed out at lunchtime, hammered the feeders again and disappeared back into cover. Over the road ten herring gulls dominated the school playing field over the black-headed gulls and the rooks didn't turn up at all.

Being the type of person who gets stuff done when it's fresh in mind or it'll likely never happen at all I got myself a new camera. The next bus out passed by the entrance to Platt Fields so I had a go with the camera in point-and-click mode to see how it handles. The lack of weight is something for me to get used to and there's going to be a lot of muscle memory to unlearn but the results are encouraging, especially given the lousy light.

Coot

Tufted duck

Heron

Now let's batten down the hatches for the next storm.

Davyhulme

Davyhulme Millennium Nature Reserve 

It was a bright, windy day after a wild and woolly night, with another storm front on the way, so I thought I'd take my aches and pains for a walk while I could. I headed over to the Davyhulme Millennium Nature Reserve to see if the first-Winter scaup that was on the Ship Canal over the weekend was still about. Rather than mess about I got the 256 to Woodsend Circle and walked down to Eddisbury Avenue and down into the reserve.

Davyhulme Millennium Nature Reserve 

The small birds were keeping under cover. House sparrows, goldfinches and blue tits muttered in the hedgerows and blackbirds rummaged round the sides of the paths. Even the goldcrests were feeding on the ground.

First sight of the canal through the trees found a couple of teal and the first of the dozens of gadwall I'd be bumping into today. A little further on three dabchicks bobbed about on with more gadwall and a bit further on five great crested grebes — four first-Winters and an adult — cruised the waves.

I bumped into a couple of birdwatchers who confirmed the scaup was still about. It had been reported on the stretch of canal by the picnic tables, today it had moved on into the little dock by Barton Lock where it had joined a flock of tufted ducks. The bad news being that that dock's thickly fringed with trees so getting a view can be tricky. But not impossible.

I got there and found dozens of gadwalls and coots, handfuls of teal, a heron, a raft of black-headed gulls with a couple of herring gulls, a common gull and a lesser black-back, no tufties. I walked down to Barton Dock where there was a better view of the gulls and a couple of cormorants.

Barton Dock 

I strolled back and tried the dock again, having better luck this time as the raft of a couple of dozen tufties had drifted out into the middle of the dock. I looked for the scaup, finding another couple of dabchicks in the crowd and gadwalls floated in and out. It took a good ten minutes to find the scaup. I could give a lot of excuses like there were trees in the way and the scaup tended to dive long and deep but the plain fact was that it was at the front of the crowd and I just wasn't seeing it. It came as a relief when I finally spotted it.

I walked back down the path by the ponds. Goldfinches and house sparrows muttered in the depths of the dogwoods by the big pool, chaffinches and bullfinches flitted about the willows. A mixed tit flock — mostly great tits and blue tits with a couple of long-tailed tits — bounced through the bushes and into the willows. I was very conscious that treecreeper still isn't on the year list but every bird I spotted limbering quietly up and down the tree trunks turned out to be a great tit.

Davyhulme Millennium Nature Reserve 

Coming out of this reserve is always disconcerting because the way out leads to a mini-roundabout with five turn-offs all of which are labelled Eddisbury Avenue. Ignore the signs and walk straight ahead.

I was traveling light as the camera kit is hors de combat. I've been thinking over the weekend: I'm not Peter Pan and perhaps some of the everyday aches and pains won't be being helped by my lugging a lot of heavy kit about for three or four hours at a time. I thought that perhaps it's time to get a bridge camera rather than carrying on with a DSLR and a big lens. Feeling the difference in weight on today's walk decided me: the aches from Thursday's spill made themselves felt, I'd have been knackered with the usual load. So that's me for a new camera.

Crunching the numbers

It's a grim sort of a day and I didn't feel like going for a walk so I thought I'd revisit my birdwatching stats. I'm often asked why I don't put things away properly at home and the honest answer is that I want to be able to find them. I put some notebooks away safe fifteen years ago which is why I have stats for only twenty-nine of the past thirty-six years entered into BirdTrack, which is what I'm using for the number-crunching.

A long while back I listed the places where I'd seen the most species of birds. This is an update (with the caveat about the missing notebooks):

• Martin Mere 158 species
• Leighton Moss 137
• Marshside 119
• Dawlish Warren 116
• Pennington Flash 113
• Frodsham Marsh 109
• Crossens Marsh 108
• Elton Reservoir 108
• Seaforth Nature Reserve 98
• Crosby Marine Lake 96
• Leasowe Lighthouse 96
• Bowling Green Marsh 91
• Lunt Meadows 90
• Leighton Moss coastal pools 88
• New Lane 87
• Red Cat Lane, Burscough 87
• West Kirby 86
• Little Woolden Moss 84
• Carrington Moss 83
• Chat Moss 79
• Hollingworth Lake 78
• Topsham 78
• Hodbarrow 77
• Red Rocks, Hoylake 76

All told, there are seventy-two places where I've recorded more than fifty species. And a *lot* of places I've visited less than a handful of times with forty-odd species recorded. Which is a testament not to my birdwatching skills but to the richness of these places. Add to these those sites which don't host a huge variety of species but have huge numbers of what there is and those places with very specialized habitats, given enough time and opportunity there's plenty about to see if the wind's in your favour.

Mediterranean gulls, Martin Mere 

Home thoughts

It seemed a shame to be wasting what's probably going to be the last fine day of the month — certainly the last fine day before a week's worth of weather warnings — but I'd barely had two hours' sleep before the cat became impatient for her breakfast at nine and there were domestic errands to be run. 

I'm not sure if it's the subtle change in the weather prior to the storm front, a freak of Friday or whatever but the large gulls were out in force on the school playing field this lunchtime. At one point there were nineteen herring gulls and six lesser black-backs with the usual quota of a dozen black-headed gulls and a common gull.

The birds in the back garden are having to make do with suet pellets and fat balls at the moment, there were no black sunflower seeds in the shop and I'm not paying the current prices for sunflower hearts (the casing of a sunflower seed is not two-thirds of its weight). They've probably been bought up by people planning on gaming their garden birdwatch results next weekend. I scattered a bag of mealworms for the blackbirds, robins and dunnocks and they were immediately hoovered up by a neighbour's cat which will probably go home and turn its nose up at whatever expensive treat its owner's put in its bowl.

Martin Mere

Red-breasted goose

It was another very cold and beautiful Winter's day and I headed off to New Lane for the long walk to Martin Mere, hoping to find some warblers by the perimeter fence to the water treatment works. I took the stopping train to Wigan via Swinton so I only had to wait in the cold for ten minutes for the Southport train at Wigan.

Setting off from New Lane 

The mud on the path by New Lane Station made a reassuring crunch noise underfoot, the walking for most of the day was very good. The water treatment works was busy with more than a hundred black-headed gulls and a similar number of starlings. Dozens of pied wagtails and meadow pipits worked the filtration pans with a grey wagtail and rather a lot of magpies. The hedgerow was busy with chaffinches, blackbirds and great tits.

A steady flow of woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows and a couple of skeins of pink-feet passed overhead. A few greenfinches flew over and my first yellowhammer of the year flew by and joined the greenfinches and chaffinches in the trees beyond the field of fennel. Most of the dark shapes rummaging about in the fennel were blackbirds, robins and meadow pipits though I flushed a woodcock out into the open as I scrunched by. It flew over the railway line into the coverts behind the farmhouses.

I crossed the line and followed the path round to the perimeter of Martin Mere. The first of many small groups of snipe zipped overhead. Only the female of the usual pair of stonechats was about and she quickly dived into the relative warmth of a clump of burdock. A mixed flock of long-tailed tits, goldfinches and reed buntings rummaged about in the reeds. 

Cattle egret                                                                                    

Cattle egret and friends

Over on the other side of the fence the longhorn cattle grazing the edge of the Martin Mere rough took a look at me and I took a look at them. Three cattle egrets flew out from the herd and headed out into the reeds, quickly returning when they noticed a fourth jump up with a frog in its beak and settle on a bull's back to eat it.

Martin Mere 

Redwing

I joined the path around the Martin Mere reedbeds. There were more woodpigeons and snipe overhead, chaffinches, redwings and magpies in the hedges, and blackbirds, robins and wrens in the undergrowth. A female sparrowhawk passed by while a kestrel sat in the top of a tree and watched me pass by. I'd gone about a hundred yards when I flushed my second woodcock of the day, taking the opportunity to compare its rather grumpy alarm call with the zips of the snipe passing overhead.

Siberian chiffchaff

I passed robins, great tits and dunnocks on the path to the water treatment works and took a position with the sun behind me for checking out the perimeter fence. The first bird I saw was a common chiffchaff which flew through the fence and joined a couple of pied wagtails on the nearest filtration bed. The next bird I saw as I looked back was a Siberian chiffchaff in the hawthorns by the fence. There were a couple of common chiffchaffs so I could compare their warm, olive yellow upperparts and mostly primrose yellow underparts with the Sibe's cool brown upperparts and pale underparts with touches of acid yellow. I could also take an array of "There was a warbler on that branch" photos. A goldcrest joined in but wish as I might a yellow-browed warbler didn't turn up. Serves me right for being greedy.

I retraced my steps to the main path and walked round to Martin Mere, taking care to hang on to the electric fence at a couple of points because although the mud made reassuring scrunching noises there were a few places inviting the unwary traveller to crack through the ice for a shin-depth of cold water.

I got to the main road and could have carried on back to Burscough Bridge for the train but there was unfinished business at Martin Mere and after two hours' walking in the biting cold a cup of tea and a bit of a warm was enticing.

Martin Mere 

I went straight to the Discovery Hide and found that the mere was half-frozen. Whoopers, mallards, coots, wigeon and pintails crowded the open water, shelducks and lapwings loafed on the ice, greylags and pinkfeet squabbled on the far bank. A few black-tailed godwits twittered in front of the hide. And there, out on one of the islands and glistening in the sunlight was the red-breasted goose.

Shelduck, red-breasted goose and pintail

Shelducks, mallards and whooper swans

Shelducks and black-headed gulls

So I got myself a cup of tea and quarter of an hour's warm and set off for Burscough Bridge.

I'd been dead careful on all that icy mud all day so of course I had to come a cropper crossing the road. I stepped on a bit of black ice and landed on my back, literally taking the breath out of me. It was a lot more effective than those exercises they give you for clearing the rubbish out of your tubes before you have the morning inhaler but I wouldn't recommend it for general use. Luckily there was no traffic about and no witnesses to my ungainly crawling to the kerbside trying to catch my breath. I scrabbled myself up, found there was no harm done and gingerly toddled off. A hundred yards down the road I realised I'd lost my woolly hat. I decided it could stay in the middle of the road, it might provide some traction for the next poor wretch trying to cross the road.

The fields were busy with lapwings, starlings and fieldfares. Waves upon waves of pink-footed geese flew over heading to roost from the Lancashire mosses. A pair of whooper swans grazed the turf field on Curlew Lane. As I approached Burscough and the sun dropped below the clouds about a hundred rooks had a last supper in the stubble fields before heading back to the rookery behind the station.

Winter Hill from Burscough

"No harm done" was a bit premature. The big lens needs a bit of TLC,

What the hell is that? birds

One bird i didn't mention in yesterday's write-up (because I was tired and forgot) was one of the gulls at Southport beach. I was just approaching the pier and contemplating the least silly way of running up the concrete slope onto the walkway underneath the pier when a couple of large gulls flew overhead. One was an obvious herring gull. The other was the same size but slightly darker grey above and had a sooty grey hood. Many herring gulls have extensive streaking on their heads in Winter but this was a lot extreme: only the face in front of the eyes and the throat were white and the face messy. I didn't get any more than that first impression as it disappeared over the pier and away and I couldn't pick it up again later. So it's one of those "What the hell was that?" birds, all honest birdwatchers accumulate their fair share of them, I've had hundreds. 

I know what I would like it to have been but that would be a new taxon for me and I'd want a lot longer and better view of one before even thinking of claiming it. Which doesn't mean I won't be keeping a close eye on the local bird reports just in case. I won't be able to retrospectively add it to my lists but I'll know what first impression to look out for.