Birding Group at Hoylake etc. 25th September 2018
The birding group had scheduled the 25th September for Hoylake. I’m not sure how this came about because, with a reltively low high tide of 9.3m at 12:15pm, we were never likely to see a spectacle. What we did have going for us was a beautiful sunny day with no heat haze and possibly the best viewing conditions ever. Not many birds, though.
We didn’t think it worth going to Burton first just half an hour so we drove to Meols and parked up at the very end of the promenade where the coastal path starts that leads to Leosowe. Here we got pretty much what we were going to get for the rest of the day – Redshanks and Curlew. We walked down the promenade for a bit but nothing new came in so we drove down to Hoylake where we met up with the others. Here we at least got some distant Common Scoter and also a Peregrine standing on the sand right at the water’s edge. We also got a small number of distant Sanderling. Remarkably there are still a lot of Swallows around.
When it became cear that we weren’t going to get much more we decided to drop down to Parkgate but we stopped off briefly at West Kirby Marine Lake where we got more Redshank but also some Turnstone.
At Parkgate we had a close encounter with a Kestrel who spent all the time we were there perched on the stone wall by the footpath that runs along the marsh. It occasionally took off after a bird but returned empty clawed –at least while we were there. A couple of Buzzards flew overhead and then we got fantastic, close views of a Ringtail Hen Harrier that came in really close to the car park and then turned away from us, returning occasionally for another bit of a show. This is probably the closest I have been to a Hen Harrier on the Wirral so we were very pleased with that. There were a few smaller birds around including Stonechat and Meadow Pipit.
We went for lunch at the Carvery at the other end of Parkgate – we won’t do that again! And then drove down for a quick half hour at Burton but there wasn’t much there and we only stayed about half an hour.
That was the end of our day. Not exactly high tide material but we still managed to get some nice birds and especially in the raptor department.
Bird Sightings : Hoylake : 25th Sep 2018
| Common Shelduck | 20 |
| Common Scoter | 20 |
| Great Cormorant | 40 |
| Eurasian Oystercatcher | 400 |
| Common Redshank | 200 |
| Eurasian Curlew | 100 |
| Sanderling | 6 |
| Black-headed Gull | 100 |
| Herring Gull | 20 |
| Lesser Black-backed Gull | 6 |
| Great Black-backed Gull | 10 |
| Rock Dove | 4 |
| Common Wood Pigeon | 4 |
| Peregrine Falcon | 1 |
| Barn Swallow | 10 |
| Pied Wagtail | 6 |
Bird Sightings : West Kirby Marine Lake: 25th Sep 2018
| Common Redshank | 80 |
| Ruddy Turnstone | 20 |
Bird Sightings : Parkgate : 25th Sep 2018
| Grey Heron | 1 |
| Little Egret | 10 |
| Hen Harrier | 1 |
| Common Buzzard | 2 |
| Common Kestrel | 1 |
| European Stonechat | 2 |
| Meadow Pipit | 8 |
Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetlands : 25th Sep 2018
| Canada Goose | 20 |
| Black Swan | 1 |
| Mallard | 20 |
| Northern Shoveler | 20 |
| Common Teal | 150 |
| Common Moorhen | 2 |
| Black-tailed Godwit | 30 |
| Common Snipe | 2 |