Distant Dreams

I jumped out of the car and glanced towards the distant tide line whereupon I noticed a Marsh Harrier closer in, dead ahead but already heading west. As quick as possible I grabbed the camera from a shoulder bag on the passenger seat, set it to “sport” mode, switched it on and pointed. But already the harrier was on its way towards Fluke Hall, Knott End and eventually I guess the River Wyre which it could follow south and west. On autofocus the camera picked up some clear pictures of the Isle of Man ferry far out in the bay but missed the dark dot of the receding Marsh Harrier. They may fly quite slowly but they can certainly cover some ground, and by the time I reached Pilling Water, the harrier was over the horizon. Over the last couple of years I have had many local sightings of Marsh Harrier without getting one decent photo; one of these days!

Marsh Harrier
Marsh Harrier

There was nothing for it then but to forget Marsh Harriers for another day, concentrate on birding the sea wall, the fields behind and Pilling Water itself. I substituted the harrier with 2 Kestrels that quartered over the marsh, hovering now and again as a few Swallows buzzed them briefly. I counted 40+ Swallows hawking over the outflow, others settling on the usual rail, then just 2 Swift, several House Martin and a lonely Common Sandpiper, the peak of autumn migration now passed for this species. At the wildfowler’s pools I heard a Willow Warbler call from the willows and watched a party of 9 Goldfinch move through a margin of thistles. Out on the marsh I could see 2 Grey Heron, but in contrast to a couple of days ago, only one Little Egret. A handful of Dunlin went west towards Preesall Sands, and a single Snipe flew calling from the marsh then overhead.

Swallow
Swift

I made my way back to Lane Ends car park where another Willow Warbler called from the nearest trees; there’s been more than a few about this week.

Next it had to be Conder Green - “Wader City”, where each birder dreams of falling over the next “biggy”, spotting it in the creek from the wound down car window or peering from the “hide” at the mud where the bird waits for fame and probable torment. It was not to be, as I settled for 5 Greenshank, 155 Redshank, 1 Spotted Redshank, 190 Lapwing, 4 Grey Heron, 1 Little Egret, 3 Common Sandpiper, 2 Snipe,7 Oystercatcher. So sorry folks that log on here for the chance of seeing the one good enough for the pager, it’s just common old stuff I’m afraid with yet another Little Egret picture, but I did take it myself today. Passerines today were represented by the Goldfinch flock and a couple of Tree Sparrows that I watched searching the roadside traffic signs for hidden insect food.

Redshank
Lapwing
Curlew
Little Egret

A word of caution. If you are at Conder on a Saturday morning look out for the guy that has taken to sleeping in a car in the layby after a heavy Friday night. When he opens the car windows, the air sure does hum. On the other hand I guess he could have received a duff pager message about a wader at CG and had no petrol to get back home. He’d be better doing his local patch.

The weather looks better for some ringing tomorrow with maybe Willow Warblers on the cards after the numbers around this week.

Short Arms, Long Lens

Will sent me a picture of a Little Owl he ringed last night, one of two in the entrance of a nest hole he found while watching the adults come back with a mouse. He couldn’t get the second youngster because it scurried to the back of the tree out of reach of an outstretched arm. It’s getting to be a habit for both of us, but Will assures me he’s not a Yorkshireman by birth, and I just paid out for a new PC. Thanks Will.

Little Owl
Meanwhile today I took a walk over Pilling way towards Pilling Water where I didn’t expect to see a lot so took my camera along in the hope of getting a few pictures.

Both the Redshanks and the Lapwings had young close by, and called to them incessantly to hide and crouch from the intruder. An Oystercatcher on a post also watched me, calling to the young I knew not where. Sod’s Law came into effect when a small unringed Lapwing chick appeared about 30 yards away on open ground, but I had no rings with me other than “B” size for Skylark. Unless Redshank chicks are initially visible I find that just searching for them willy-nilly hardly ever works, particularly on the marsh at Pilling where they disappear into the muddy ditches long before I arrive, then hide away as all the while the adults call them down. So I didn’t look for the chicks, but watched and listened to the adults complaining at me while trying to follow their erratic flight with my camera.

Redshank
Redshank
Redshank
Lapwing
Oystercatcher
Signs of Autumn out on the marsh were 170 Curlews and 125 Shelduck, whilst a single Common Sandpiper flew low along the ditch, then closer by a family party of 5 Meadow Pipits and two juvenile Pied Wagtails stuck to the high tide line mark. As I walked slowly along the sea wall I had my highest count of Swift this year when more than twenty took advantage of the insects thrown up from the grass to surround me, skimming close overhead. I couldn’t find any Skylarks feeding young but there were at least 3 singing, for perhaps their second broods or another attempt following the ploughing in of first nests.

Swift
Pied Wagtail
Skylark

Keep It Quiet

It was a week or two since I visited Conder Green, so this morning because I was up with the lark I decided to motor on up there before the Bank Holiday motorists turned off for Glasson where mooching about doing pretty much nothing is a favoured pastime.

It was so quiet early on that I heard a Mistle Thrush singing from across the main road along the river, near that other pub that I forgot the name of. Also in that direction I heard a Whitethroat in song and then a Meadow Pipit a little nearer, over the roadside marsh. Other passerines moving about were several each of Linnets and Goldfinch.

I expected both the pool and the creek to be quiet with birds, but the light was good for photographs if anything came along, so I hung around counting the comings and goings of the few resident wildfowl and waders.

I think 7 Tufted Duck is the normal count now but it wasn’t difficult to count them, along with 8 Oystercatcher, 2 sitting of them on eggs, together with 5 Shelduck and a single drake Wigeon. Down in the creek I counted 8 Redshank, 1 Curlew and 2 Grey Heron, pretty slow stuff but I was getting a few pictures in the good light and the peace and quiet without parked up HGVs with motors going or other passing traffic. I even spent a minute or so trying to photograph a Swift or two when 10 or 12 moved through early on, perhaps the biggest number I have seen in the Fylde this spring; It looks like another poor Swift year.

Swift
Grey Heron
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Tufted Duck
Shelduck
Oystercatcher

I called at a farm near Thurnham where I watched male and female Pied Wagtails visiting a nest, their bills stuffed with large amounts of food, so I decided it best not to visit the nest in case the young “exploded”. Instead I looked for evidence of breeding Lapwing and Oystercatcher and found 3 Lapwing chicks a distance away, but closer, an Oystercatcher sat tight in a field of dairy cows. Over towards Thurnham village I heard more than one Buzzard call and looked across to see two of them moving between woods, harried as always by gangs of corvids. I was near Nateby yesterday where in a single field I saw more than 240 Carrion Crows, and this before the breeding season is over. Is it any wonder we lose so early lots of ground nesting birds when these gangsters are forever on the lookout?

Braides Farm next where our dry spring did nothing to help the land enhancements aimed at helping breeding waders. But I hear that a second phase of work will take place, so fingers crossed for next year.

One pair of Lapwings had young, distant over towards the gorse, too far to trek while I remained so visible to the parents, and 2 Oystercatchers sat watchful on distant posts. There were a few Linnets and Goldfinch here, plus 3 Skylark and at least 2 pairs of Meadow Pipit. I swear one bird was so intent on watching the parachutists it didn’t notice me approach quietly and take a portrait.

Meadow Pipit


Buzzard

A Swift End

I promise not to use the “w” word. You know, it starts in “w” ends in “r”. But I was quite determined to get out for a while today, even if it meant getting around a few spots, probably watching from the car in the hope that the sun might appear for a few seconds in between the “showers”, and the gale would ease.

So I started at Knott End as the tide began to run in backed by a very stiff north westerly. With a quick look along the shore, then a look off the jetty the immediately obvious obvious was the lack of Black-headed Gulls and Sandwich Terns, the gulls relocated onto wet fields and the terns moved on after a few days and nights blasting from the winds, while tucked up in bed I dreamt about rarer creatures. A few Lesser Blacks and Herring Gulls filled the vacancies on the shore created by the absent Black Headed Gulls.

The squalls came and went, the estuary water pitched up and down, as did my count of Eider not far off the jetty but I settled on a round thirty, a precise count impossible as the birds appeared then disappeared behind the troughs or became invisible through the rain. Half a dozen Shelduck mooched on the shore and a couple of parties of Knot numbering c2000 went up river towards Barnaby’s together with a couple of hundred Oystercatchers. I had the usual gaggle of Redshank below the jetty with fifteen Ringed Plover and a single Turnstone.

The Shelduck theme was repeated at Lane Ends where I counted 95 out on the marsh and spotted a Peregrine, waiting patiently as they do. A single Little Egret made an appearance from a ditch to fly west towards Fluke hall. Plenty of Lapwing and Curlew huddled on the green marsh but I was counting via binoculars, not daring to put up a scope this morning.

I had been tipped off that the RSPB’s “big wheel rotary ditcher” might make an appearance Over Wyre at Cockerham where plans are afoot to recreate some wader habitat.

Always one to seek out a easy tick I made my way to Cockerham, close to the spots that years ago, before draining, gave us Pectoral Sandpiper, on one memorable day several Wood Sandpipers, plus over the years many broods of Lapwings and Redshank to ring. It was a Lapwing from here at Cockerham first ringed in June 1987 that was found close by the same spot in July 2003, 16 plus years! Somewhat ironic that in those intervening years and after, Lapwings virtually disappeared as a breeding species, but here we are realising that actually it is better that Lapwings are around.



The RSPB tell us that, “the ditching machine is a giant rotating digger pulled by a tractor. Around ten times faster than a conventional digger, it chisels accurately through the surface of fields to create shallow ditches and pools that are excellent for wetland wildlife”. Anyway I saw it ploughing through the field, regurgitating soil out of its nether regions, flinging it up and away. It made one pass through the field, partly I think for the dozen or so spectators and their 4x4s gathered to watch, so I thought to return when the sun came out for a picture of the beast doing its best but in the meantime taking a quick look at Conder.

Well birding is never entirely predictable and whilst Conder is pretty consistent, there are obviously both species and numbers passing through there that I don’t catch up with, e.g. the elusive Wood Sandpiper and now Osprey! But it never bothers me, there‘s always the next day, and how much better to find these things yourself rather than on the whim of a pager or text message.

But, they were there, the Motley Crew, Kingfisher, Spot Red, Greenshank, Snipe and Grey Heron, but no star attractions, no celebrities. Even that Jeremy Lane guy couldn’t turn me up a lower down the bill Mediterranean Gull, just a few hundred common Black- headed Gull. Isn’t birding a local patch brilliant?



I stopped back at Braides just in time to see a single Swift fly over the fields as did several Swallows. But the party had ended, all the vehicles gone, even the super duper ditcher, just a single furrow to show, but some hopeful black & yellow field markers. Maybe it was a demonstration day, I must email my contact.