Reports of a Little Gull and some Black-necked Grebes at Pennington encouraged us in our visit there on a – not particularly warm – spring morning. On parking up and getting the scope out, it only took a few minutes to get one of these species and a good year tick.
After three weeks of flu, I at last managed to get out of the house and get to the last session of the birding group term, which was to Marbury Park which turned out to be a good morning followed by lunch and a planning session at the Spinner & Bergamot.
The first birding group visit of March was to Burton Mere Wetlands where we hoped to see some Russian White-Fronted Geese – but to no avail. However, it was a nice morning and we did have a couple of nice views of birds, particularly on the scrape.
Our visit to Marshside this year fell on a lovely, mainly wind-free, sunny day. Although it was obviously low tide, there were still good numbers of birds on the various bodies of water around the reserve. At Marshside we did not see anything especially unusual but after we were done at Marshside, Anne and I…
Our scheduled birding group visit to Parkgate on the 17th February for a “high” tide of 9.1 metres at 10:58 am wasn’t very well attended with Anne and I and Richard the only people going there.
The 9th of December was our last birding group morning out before Christmas and we chose to go to Moore Nature Reserve. It was a very inauspicious weather forecast but, in fact, it wasn’t too bad.
On 2nd December the birding group went to Leosowe and Parkgate. We started out by walking from the car park along the promenade in the direction of Meols and Hoylake. The tide was a long way out but we got three Turnstones and some Little Egrets close in and, with a scope, you could you…
The last birding group trip for November was to WWT Martin Mere. It was a nice, dry day with great visibility. There was perhaps a lack of birds at some of the hides but we still managed to get 41 species and two year ticks.
The first birding group morning out was to Hoylake where there was supposed to be a high tide of 10 metres at 11:11am. This was only the second good high tide for a while so we changed the Tuesday slot when it would have been high tide at 9:52am to the following Thursday when we hoped that if we got there an hour before, we would be OK. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way but we still had a great day. Read on for more.
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.
