The last birding day of the year for us was on the 30th. A succession of ilnesses and colds over the festive period had seriously curtailed our birding chances – which seems to happen every December. Be that as it may we managed to get out just before the close of the year but…
Although the weather reports for the Wirral were poor, we decided to risk the weather to have a go at finding the Great Northern Diver seen recently on West Kirby Marine Lake. We knew that on a Sunday it might be busy but we had forgotten that the tide was as far out as it…
It was the 11th of the month before we got out birding and that was a trip up to the Wirral where, although the high tide was very modest on paper at 9.7m or thereabouts, the tide seemed to come a long way in and we got some good views of the usual suspects but…
After the excitement of the Rose-coloured Starling at St. Helens, I suppose that Burton was going to be a bit of a let down but we just had an hour so we looked around on the main scrape and down at the barn then we went to the first blind where a Bearded Tit had…
We had a spare day available to us and thought we would go up to the Wirrall for a slightly high tide to see if we could get any raptors. High tide wasn’t until around 1pm however, so we thought we would take a punt at looking for a juvenile Rose-coloured Starling (or Rosy Starling)…
Although the high tides had passed for the month, there was still a 9.3 metre tide at 2:30pm and there was also the chance to see the Spotted Crake at Burton Mere Wetlands that had eluded us so far this month. As it turned out, we got three year ticks in one day!
We had hoped to get our first Spoonbills of the year with this quick return to Burton but we were out of luck with the birds already gone. On the other hand we were to early for the Osprey (which would also have been a UK first for the year.
Short of good ideas for a birding day out, given a mixed weather forecast, we opted for a return to Burton Mere Wetlands despite having been there recently. As it happened, we had a great day out getting forty-eight species including a couple of year ticks – and unlikely ones at that.
After a sunny day we were hopeful of a another one the following day when we decided to go up to the Wirral and visit some of the sites we rarely visit. Thes first stop was Leosowe Lighthouse but it was so windy and there tide was so far out that we soon abandoned that…
