Birding Group Visit to Hoylake 15th January 2013
Birding Group Visit to Hoylake 15th January 2013
After the disappointing visit to Burton Mere Wetlands we decided to rescue the day by driving up to Parkgate and then on to Hoylake. The reason I suggested that we go up to Hoylake was that I had been looking at local sightings on the internet before we set off and had come across a posting on the Dee Estuary Birding web site that mentioned a high tide at Hoylake the day before that had featured tens of thousands of birds whose roost had been pushed up to within a few yards of the promenade at the high tide. The tide was supposed to be reasonably high again today so I suggested to the group that we go there and see if it would be as spectacular today. Since we were only a few miles from there anyway we decided to go just making the briefest of stops at Parkgate en route. There were a few birders at Parkgate but I got the impression that they were – like us – just having a look before setting of for Hoylake. We got to Hoylake around 12.30pm and even before we stopped the car we got a good inkling of what we were in for.
The road down to the promenade is a short hill and as we drove down we could already see a mass of birds along the water line – no more than 100 feet from the promenade. There were lots of photographers and birders already there and, even though there was still an hour before high tide, everyone was already getting great views of the roosting birds and getting settled in. We parked up and got our positions. All along the entire length of the waterline as far as you could see there were Knot – possibly some 16,000 of them huddled tight together and inching up the sand towards us as the tide slowly came in. The tide came in at the far end of the promenade first so, as land disappeared at that end, all the birds edged up until the already crammed body of birds became a seething mass of Knot.
As well as the Knot there were lots of Sanderling whizzing around feeding in their classic “sewing machine” style in the foreground and other birds were also mixed in with the mass of birds. There were Dunlin and I spotted at least one Grey Plover which I could identify positively as I had in in my bins when it decided to stretch its wings prior to take-off and showing off its dark “armpit” that is diagnostic of the bird. The road along the promenade was quite busy and when vehicle doors were slammed or when the bin truck passed by clattering as it went, the birds would all take to the air, wheel around and give fantastic displays to the massed birders who, by this time, had increased to a solid line all along the promenade. When the birds decided there was no real threat, they started coming to ground again in their dozens and dozens miraculously finding a landing spot in what looked like a solid mass of other birds.
Out on the sea there were similarly gigantic numbers of Gulls but the Knot were the stars of the day. We stood there and gazed in amazement until the tide had clearly turned and birds had started to edge further out again and by about 2.45pm we decided we had been cold for long enough and so we thought we would warm up by going for a pub lunch – perfect !