Long-eared Owl at Burton Mere Wetlands : 22nd February 2014

Long-eared Owl at Burton Mere Wetlands : 22nd February 2014

While we were on holiday in Lanzarote I had been monitoring some of the sightings in and around Manchester and two in particular jumped out at me. The first was a roosting Long-eared Owl that had been at Burton Mere Wetlands and the second was a Laughing Gull that had been seen on the Marine Lake pontoon at New Brighton. With it being the last high tide day of February (10.1 metres at 1.27pm) and the weather threatening to take a turn for the worse it felt like a good time to try for these birds before they disappeared.

We started out by going to Burton Mere Wetlands. We asked the warden if the bird had been seen today but he said that there had been no reports yet that day. He was a bit fed up because the numerous visitors to see the bird (600 in the last week) had totally trashed the parts of the path that are not covered by boardwalk. The section from the end of the boardwalk to the start of the steps down to the Inner Marsh Farm hide was a bit like Glastonbury on a wet day. We slipped and slid our way through this and were encouraged to keep going as we met several people on their way back.

When we got to the spot (around a third of the way down the path to the IMF hide on the right hand side. If we had any doubt where it was the mud gave us a clue because at the right spot the whole area was mud and the wardens had had to put a sign up to stop people climbing up the small hill on the left side which was, itself, a mud slide. The warden was concerned that someone was going to get hurt it was so bad.

Anyway, as we got to the spot a couple of people were able to point the bird out to us. Owls are masters of disguise and have the habit of disappearing into the foliage in the blink of an eye. I eventually found it with some help but every time I dropped my bins to get an idea of exactly where I was looking I lost the bird and it took a lot of re-finding. It was impossible to believe the bird could disappear so easily without actually moving.

In the end we got several views of the bird somewhat obscured by branches and twig. If all the views we got were put together we probably just got a full bird out of it. Anne eventually managed to get the bird in my scope so I attempted to get some scoped video on my phone but was foiled by the inability of the phone camera to decide where to focus. Even if I manually focused it seemed to lose focus again quite soon.

Anyway we had seen the bird, the last of the five main UK owl species. Three of these (Long-eared, Tawny and Little) we had seen at Burton Mere Wetlands. We did spend some time at the reserve and saw a nice variety of birds including some of the first Avocets of the year here and a nice Water Rail but we were keen to try for the Laughing Gull up at New Brighton. The weather was threatening to get even colder and wetter so we thought we needed to get a move on.

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetlands : Reception Hide

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetlands : Environs

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetlands : Inner Marsh Farm