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| Garston shore |
24 bravely ventured out on our new year birdwatch, a
promising start weather wise rapidly went down hill at dinner time, when as we
say in Liverpool 'It chucked it down' and we had to take shelter in our cars
and Sefton park’s cafe.
Speke Garston
shore is usually good for waders and we were not disappointed; after gawping at
a wily fox on the tide line for 5 minutes we focused on the birds. On the
mudflats/marshes we saw redshank, ringed plover, oystercatcher, turnstone
and dunlin. Various gulls were parading including some Gt black back's feeding
on a dead fish. Swans were on the river alongside Canadian geese, widgeon, shelduck,
mallard and teal.
Walking
along the path, smaller foragers were found, wren, reed bunting,
goldfinch, blackbird, dunnock, robin, great and blue tits.
A
splendid male pheasant trotted along the shore at the bottom of the embankment,
accompanied by a rabbit!
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| Team on the path, checking out the Curlew |
The
fields in between the industrial units and the pathway have proved fruitful in
the past and have revealed hidden gems. Several curlew were feeding on the
grass in the field. Some members
of the group formed our usual ‘flushing’ party line ready to sweep a
particulary wet field with pools, while the rest of us moved ahead of them
ready to see what their activities might achieve. Success, first to
flush was meadow pipit, then skylark, and best of all snipe and jack
snipe.
No
peregrine on the units today, but we did see kestrel and buzzard.
Moving
on to our next stop Sefton park. Eventually the downpour abated and set
off around the lake. All the usual suspects where there, mute swans with
Cygnet's, Canadian geese, mallards, a cormorant, a zillion black headed gulls
with a few common gulls in the mix, however stars of the lake had to be half a
dozen or so little grebes ducking and diving in the rain. No mandarins or
tufties today.
We
headed to the feeding station, here with the squirrels and pigeons were great
and blue tits, robins, blackbirds, gt spotted woodpecker, nuthatch,
crows, magpies, collared dove and jay. No parakeets, so we moved on
further down the path towards the fairy glen. A flock of long tailed tits were
busy feeding, in the same tree as a super little treecreeper.
A
squeaky dog call alerted us to parakeets being in the vicinity, but where?
eventually Chris espied one in a large tree by the palm house, in
fact on closer observation there turned out to be not one but five bright
green keets, unbothered by us or the miserable weather.
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| Greenbank Park |
We
decided to make a quick diversion to the nearby Greenbank Park as the last
venue of the day. Here was a forlorn single male tufted duck swimming with the mallards
and Aylesbury duck hybrids. Mistle thrushes fed in the field adjacent to the
park, but no foreign thrushes fieldfare and redwing. A solitary Grey heron sat
on the raft in the middle of the lake, a patient, stealthy predator, waiting
for his fish dinner to swim past.
In
the end we had seen 58 species in total, not a bad tally for a curtailed trip
in less than clement weather!
Blackbird, Black Headed Gull,
Blue Tit, Buzzard, Canada Geese, Carrion
Crow, Chaffinch, Collared Dove, Common
Gull, Common Snipe, Coot, Cormorant,
Curlew, Dunlin, Goldcrest, Goldfinch,
Great Black Backed Gull, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Great Tit,
Greenfinch, Grey Heron, Herring Gull, Jackdaw,
Jack Snipe, Jay, Kestrel, Linnet, Lesser black backed
Gull, little Grebe, Long Tailed Tit, Magpie, Mallard,
Meadow Pipit, Mistle Thrush, Moorhen, Mute
Swan, Nuthatch, Oystercatcher, Pheasant,
Pigeon, Pied Wagtail, Redshank, Reed Bunting,
Ring Necked Parakeet, Ringed Plover, Robin, Skylark,
Starling, Stock Dove, Teal,Treecreeper,Tufted
Duck, Turnstone, Whooper Swan, Widgeon, Wood Pigeon,
Wren
Laura
