I have been staying with friends on the
Wirral and making short visits to some of the local birding locations. Here are a few images from my visit.
I started at
Hoylake where it was high tide. Not high-enough to move all the birds off the foreshore. This group of Redshank was resting up while their favoured feeding areas were still covered by the tide.
A trio of waders here with, from the left, a Redshank, an Oystercatcher and a Dunlin.
A better view of a Dunlin (left) with a Redshank.
Here a Redshank alongside an Oystercatcher with a very muddy bill.
An Oystercatcher in search of a meal. The white chin-strap indicates this is a first winter bird.
Another muddy-billed Oystercatcher complete with a meal in its bill. I didn't manage to capture what happened next: it took its meal and dropped it in one of the many puddles to wash the mud off before swallowing it.
An Oystercatcher flies by. This one seems to have been feeding in grass areas resulting in an earth-coloured bill.
Oystercatchers can be quarrelsome and noisy birds. Here two square-off.
Over the winter several thousand Oystercatchers gather together when there are the highest of Spring tides. Here two fly-by a distant small gathering.
A Redshank leaving its roost. The distinctive white trailing edge to the inner wing and rump and barred tail are clearly seen in this view.
A Redshank also searches for a meal.
A trio of Redshank on the dropping tide.
I only noted one of these (Common) Ringed Plovers.
The Dee Estuary is a wintering area for many thousand of these Shelducks.
Also gathering along the shore-line are large numbers of Cormorants. Careful examination finds Great Black-backed and Herring Gulls amongst them with six (and a half) Curlews nearer the camera.
In the sand dunes Meadow Pipits can be found. A few breed: these are joined by many that move off the hills after the breeding season.
Wherever there might be food on offer there will be Starlings. Here is a trio. The blue base to the bill of the middle bird indicates it is a male – blue for a boy. A pink bill-base would indicate a female. The left-most bird shows a black mask indicating it is a first year bird yet to moult in to full adult plumage.
This is a rather splendid-looking Starling. Field guides tell you that the breast of Starlings are spotted but careful examination shows the pointed breast-feathers have 'V'-shaped white tips.
With a slight turn of its body the green gloss is more evident.
A visit to the
West Kirby Marine Lake did not go quite as planned. South Parade alongside is being reconstructed with much disturbance. In normal winters it is the site to visit for Red-breasted Mergansers, the salt/brackish-water equivalent of what we see here (and at The Flash): a trio of drake Goosanders.
I could find no Red-breasted Mergansers: here are two brownhead Goosanders. This species has been in record numbers of the lake this year.
Two drakes and a brownhead Goosander.
Two of each with one brownhead having a distinctly 'bad-hair' day.
In the distance were these waders waiting for the tide to drop. Most of them are Knots: there can be tens of thousands on the Dee Estuary during winter. In the front there at least three Dunlin and careful examination shows a red leg of a Redshank in the main pack.
One pontoon was sufficiently far from the workings. On it are a group of Redshanks (at the back) and Turnstones (at the front).
A real brute of an adult winter Herring Gull.
There had to be some 'planes of the day'. This is a Singapore Airbus A350-900 series leaving Manchester on the second leg of its flight to Houston, Texas.
On a training flight from RAF Valley on Anglesey was this Raytheon-built Beechcraft Texan II known to the RAF as the Texan T.1. This aircraft had completed a low pass along the runway of Liverpool's John Lennon International Airport and was heading low-level up the River Mersey.
(Ed Wilson)
