Garganey, Pennington Flash

A female garganey was from the viewing screen opposite Tom Edmondson hide this morning. Also today, two adult Mediterranean gulls in full breeding plumage, three black-tailed godwits in Ramsdales, two goosander, a drake and a female, and 100+ sand martins. This afternoon a swallow was over the flash.

Forster's tern, Skippool Creek

Two days ago a Forster's tern was seen flying south along the coast at Morecombe but it didn't stop and was not subsequently relocated.  However, at 16:45 today it was found roosting on a sandbar in the River Wyre at Skippool Creek, and it set in motion a mini twitch reminiscent of the African royal tern at Llandudno in 2009! 

By 17:15 we were heading north on the M6, not completely convinced that the bird would stay because our journey would take 55 minutes in which time anything could happen, but at least the tide was dropping so the sandbar would still be there when we arrived, and we adopted the attitude "if you don't try, you don't see". We were also helped by the clocks going forward by an hour last night which gave us one hours extra daylight this evening.

Ten minutes into the journey we received the negative news that we had expected, the bird had flown north until lost to view. We'd barely started our journey and it would have been very easy to turn back and spend the evening watching telly, but we decided to keep going. After all, if the sandbar was still there, then there was a decent chance that the bird was just fishing and it may return at some point.

For the next 45 minutes we continued north, but there were no further updates, either negative or positive. Finally, at the very moment we pulled onto the car park, another update - the tern was back on the sandbar. Hastily we got our stuff out of the boot and headed over to a small group of birders who were clearly watching the bird.

Dark-edged beefly, Carr Mill Dam

Dark-edged beefly is a parasitic fly which targets miner bees and other insects. They're great looking things and this one at Carr Mill Dam today was my first in St Helens. The first I ever saw was at Pennington Flash a few years ago.

This is one of the host species, Clarke's mining bee Andrena clarkella.

On the water, the female common scoter was still present today. 

Wheatears arrive

The first wheatears have arrived in the Rainford area, with two males on Clare's Moss from the Old Coach Road on 23rd March and another two at Moss Lane today. Also today a white wagtail at Moss Lane.

Common scoter, Carr Mill Dam

A female common scoter was on Carr Mill Dam today.

Avocet and kittiwake, Pennington Flash

Once again a gloriously dismal, drizzly day produced the goods at Pennington Flash, with the highlights being an avocet and an adult kittiwake. The avocet started off on the spit and then moved onto Ramsdales scrapes.

Other birds today included my first willow warbler of the year at the Slag lane end, 100 sand martins and two black-tailed godwits.

Caspian gull with "thayeri" pattern primaries, Cutacre

I called in at Cutacre CP this afternoon hoping to see the pair of garganey that had been reported earlier on Swan Lake. I could only see the drake, but while I waited I managed to find a cracking adult or 5CY Caspian gull. A real stunner!

The primary pattern of this bird is unusual for Caspian gull.... 

...the white tongue on P10 joins the white tip on the inner web, reminiscent of Thayer's gull. I didn't notice this myself until it was pointed out to me by somebody looking at the photos, but apparently about 5% of Caspian gulls have this "thayeri" pattern. More usually the tongue does not touch the white tip and the area of black between the two is much larger. 

There's a couple of interesting articles here by Chris Gibbins and here by Ian McKerchar which discuss this "thayeri" pattern (both open in a new window).

Green-winged teal, Chat Moss

It's always nice to see a green-winged teal, so I wasn't going to miss out on an opportunity to see one locally on Chat Moss. Viewing was difficult but in the end I managed to find it and it showed pretty well.

First little ringed plover of the year

My first little ringed plover of the year was on a muddy field near Winwick this morning.

Red kite and the first sand martins, Martin Mere

A red kite at Martin Mere today was only my second ever site record in 50 years of visiting the place. Also today, my first sand martins of the year with six over the mere, four adult Mediterranean gulls, at least 45 avocets plus the usuals.

Mediterranean gull.

Black scoter, Hoylake

Photo: Putative hybrid black x common scoter. 

This morning I was up early and walking across Hoylake beach at 6:30am. It was a glorious morning, with blue skies and wide open views across Liverpool Bay, but more importantly it was approaching low tide and this was virtually the only part of the day where I had any hope of seeing North Wirral's black scoter. 

This North American sea duck has been offshore here for about a week, associating with a few hundred common scoters and two hours either side of low tide is the only safe time to see it. It's a vast beach and I was walking out to the tideline which was over a mile (1.5km) offshore. You need to be sure of your tide times out here, because there are channels behind you which fill as the tide comes in and if you're not careful can leave you on a rapidly diminishing island of sand. Following the tide out is the safest way to do it but you still need to be extremely careful and aware of the state of the tide.

Eventually I reached the tideline and found many small groups of common scoter spread all over the sea, stretching away into the distance towards the wind farm. Some were just shimmering dots and identification of these birds was just impossible, even with a telescope. Fortunately though, an apparent trait of black scoter is the habit of staying close inshore so I was hopeful that it would be one of the closer birds, and so it proved, but not without much head scratching and mis-identifications!

Photo: Common scoter.

The first problem was that there were common scoter out there with far more yellow on the bill than I expected. So for example, compare the second and third birds from the right in the photo above, not only the bill patterns but also the head and bill shape. These birds were amongst the closest I saw all morning, but even so, they never stopped either bobbing up and down, diving or chasing each other, allowing just split second views and in these circumstances it would be easy to think that the second right bird must be the black scoter. I spent a lot of time videoing and photographing this flock before I realised my mistake.

Fortunately I spotted Sean, the original finder of the black scoter about 500m to the west of me and he seemed to be watching something so I headed over. It was indeed the black scoter that he had been watching for half an hour. It was alone and at close range but initially asleep when I arrived, however after 10 minutes or so it woke up. It had a large swollen blob of yellow on the bill and was very different to the earlier bird that I had tried to turn into black scoter. I was very happy with the identification. 

We watched it for another 10 minutes or so until finally it took off and flew east, more or less to where I had been standing earlier. I wish I'd left it there to be honest but I decided to walk back and try for another look and possibly get some photos.