The first birding group outing of October was to RSPB Leighton Moss and, in a break from tradition, it was on a Thursday. This was chosen over the usual Tuesday was because the high tide would be at 1:15pm rather than 11:15am which would fit it better with us because we normally want to spend the fist couple of hours at the main reserve looking for Bearded Tits before going down to the sea hides.
We decided to have a couple of days away in North Wales just for a change of scenery. It obviously wasn’t going to be the best time of year for birding, but we thought we would give it a shot anyway. We hadn’t managed to get to South Stack on Anglesey yet this year, so…
It surely could not be a coincidence that we went to the Wirral for a tide of 9.9 metres at 2:15pm on the first of April. It turned out to be something of an April’s Fool.
With a high tide at 12:52 on the Wirral, it made sense that we stop off at Burton Mere Wetlands for an hour or so to see if we could catch the first Avocets f the year and see what else was around before heading off to Parkgate for the high tide.
The last reasonable high tide of the year was on 16th and 17th December. We decided to go on Monday 16th to see if we could get any birds we had not got already this year and weren’t disappointed.
There were two high tides on the Wirral this month – 22nd August (13.48hrs 9.7m) and 23 Aug (14.30hrs 9.7m). We opted to go on the first day despite there being some weather warnings. As it happened it stayed dry but there were strong winds. We started of fat Meols before dropping down to Hoylake where we sheltered from the wind by the lifeboat station
We had a birding group visit to the Wirral scheduled for the high tide on the 9th April but with a storm developing overnight and in full force during the day, most of the group decided to stay at home. Anne and I and three others in a car from Didsbury braved the weather, though,…
We had a second go at a high tide a couple of days after our first visit when the tide was much better; 10.1 metres at 12:12pm. We started out at Riverbank Road on the Wirral. It was a bit wetter than on the Tuesday but the weather helped the tide come in a long…
The birding group had a morning out to Brockholes planned but because there was a high tide on the Wirral, we decided to there ourselves. We hadn’t had a high tide there this year because we had been on holiday in Lanzarote and, since the February high tides are usually good, we decided that that…
The birding group day out on the 25th October took in a range of sites on the Wirral, starting off with Parkgate where there was a 9.5 metre high tide at 11:48am – not particularly high but it was a beautifully sunny, clear day with fantastic visibility all the way over to Wales.
