The highlight of the month, and perhaps the year, was a visit to Leosowe Lighthouse on the 13th November 2025. We got a life tick and two year ticks on a dry, windless sunny day at the Leosowe horse paddocks and on the promenade there.
After our morning at RSPB Marshide, we stopped off at WWT Martin Mere for a cup of tea and then had a look around. With limited time and the United Utilities hide still closed (though repair work has begun) we retricted ourselves to the area between the Ron Barker Hide and the Discovery hide. Even then, we still managed to get a couple of year ticks and a good species list.
After our visit of the previous day to RSPB Bempton Cliffs, we chose to stay overnight at The Pine Marten hotel right next door to RHA Harlow Carr gardens. The idea wasn’t to be birding but the gardens were such a fantastic habitat for birds that we notched up twenty-three species including a year-tick Spotted Flycatcher.
On the 15th May we left Ye Old Fighting Cocks pub and drove down to RSPB Leighton Moss. We were hoping for another sighting of the Osprey but we were out of luck. The Bitterns were all booming away and it was quite a dry hour or so we spent there.
The birding group outing this week was to Brockholes. We decided not to go there.; instead we went to Burton Mere Wetlands where, last week, we had gone before going up to Parkgate for the high tide. Unfortunately they were strimming all around the scrape that morning, so we had very little chance to see…
The birding group had appointed the 16th as a day for a visit to WWT Martin Mere but, as a lot of people couldn’t make it, we just went up to the Wirral to mooch around a couple of sites that I wanted to do that we don’t always do. We went to Leosowe Lighthouse,…
The birding group were due to go to Macclesfield Forest on 2nd May but I chose not to go there because of the hilly nature of that particular walk. Instead, we decided to go to Woolston Eyes nature reserve and we had a very pleasant morning with a good number of species including the year-tick…
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…
Despite predictions, we had fair weather for a trip up to Burton Mere Wetlands. Despite there being quite a lot of rain recently, water levels were fairly good and afforded us decent views of a few waders, especially Sandpipers.
