Sandwich terns, Pennington Flash

One of the great joys of birding is the unpredictability of the hobby. I can walk out of the door in the morning and have almost no idea what I am going to see today, it could be a good day, it could be a poor day, it depends on so many things and even if the birds are there, they might decide not to show themselves. However, when I got to the flash in heavy drizzle this morning and a fellow birder commented that it wasn't a great day for birding, my reaction was "it's a Sandwich tern day".  It just had that feel to it and I knew from experience that these were the type of days in July when they often drop in. 

So when Ian messaged me at 8:30 to inform me that there were three Sandwich terns off the sailing club it was no great surprise. I was in Horrock's and it took me a minute or so to get onto them, but then I heard their screeches which pointed me in the right direction. They were flying around off the sailing club with several common terns, but they stood out being paler and larger. 

I watched them for 15 minutes, occasionally they would come into the centre of the flash when they were a bit closer, once I thought that they were heading for the spit but turned back, but overall though I was pleased to see them they were always a bit distant and it was a bit unsatisfactory.

After a while I decided that it would be worth driving to Green Lane and having a look from there. Of course it was right in the middle of rush hour and St Helens road is never good at that time so it wasn't a particularly appealing prospect. However, with no school traffic at the moment it wasn't as bad as expected and less than 10 minutes later I arrived at Green Lane. A brisk walk to the viewing area ensued, with fingers crossed that the birds would still be present.

The plan couldn't have gone better, no sooner had I arrived than I saw all three of the Sandwich terns balancing precariously on buoy number 8, the closest buoy to me at a distance of about 50m. I don't think I've ever actually seen three terns of any species balancing on the same buoy before so I was a bit concerned that at least one of them might fall off before I could take a photo, but I needn't have worried they all stayed on the buoy for at least another 10 minutes, before finally, at 9:12 they flew high and off to the west.

Interestingly, as they flew away over the tall trees at the western end of the flash they were joined by a fourth tern which looked the same size and structure as the others and was probably another Sandwich tern, but if it was, it certainly hadn't been on the flash. I wondered if this bird had actually been flying over calling and the three on the buoy had heard it and flown up to join it and away west.

More clouded yellows and other butterflies at Martin Mere

Fabulous to see at least three clouded yellows from the Hale hide this morning. Surely the first wave of clouded yellows which arrived two weeks ago in our area must have died off now, and these seem in pretty good nick so perhaps these are new arrivals.

No chance of a decent photo from the hide of course, and probably not even if I was outside the hide, but just great to see them here!

Peregrine display and an early morning sea watch

High above the lighthouse at the northern most tip of the Great Orme at 8am this morning, a pair of peregrines were in courtship display, chasing each other in synchronised flight, sometimes coming quite close to me, at other times quite distant, they rolled around in the air and occasionally one bird would flip upside down and offer it's talons to the other. I didn't hear any calling. Not particularly obvious from the photos but one bird, the female, was considerably larger than the other.

I'd got there early at 6:30am in order to do a sea watch. It was windy but the conditions were not ideal with the wind direction being south west rather than the preferred north west, and obviously the end of July is also not a great time for a sea watch, yet even so I managed 5 Manx shearwaters and about 10 gannets, so I was happy with that.

I suppose it is obvious which is the larger bird! The female had a very dark underwing compared to the male.

The Grim Orme

It can't always be a beautiful day on the Great Orme, it has to be the Grim Orme some days and today was that day. Wind and drizzle and a good soaking were the headlines today. Most of the seabirds have gone now, hopefully with many fledged young. Only kittiwakes and shags remain. A couple of distant gannets glowed like beacons in the murk. Otherwise not much, but I live to fight another day! I'm going to try a sea watch tomorrow, who knows what that will bring.... well actually, I've got a pretty good idea.

Surveying at Martin Mere

Over the years I've had several spells of volunteering at Martin Mere and I've been back again over the past couple of weeks. Last week it was a butterfly survey, this week an NVC habit survey. 

In my working life I've done plenty of NVC surveys, usually of large moorland sites in Northern Scotland or Northern Ireland. They can be tough going, often over very difficult terrain, and in order to correctly identify the community types they ideally require identification of all plants in a 2m quadrat, not just flowers, but also grasses, rushes, sedges, mosses and fungi. 

A site in the moorlands can involve many miles walked across moor and bog, often in inclement weather, in order to survey perhaps 100 quadrats. Typically I'd fly to Inverness on a Saturday, then hire a car and drive north for a couple of hours. Then I'd start work on the Sunday, continuing all week and finally returning home the following Sunday. Even then it wasn't finished, I had to get all the books out, assign each quadrat a community and then write the report. This could take another few days.

Fortunately, volunteering for an NVC at Martin Mere is very different. First of all the terrain is nowhere near as difficult, and we only go out on nice days! Also, my part is just to identify the plants and decide on the coverage of each species, I don't get involved in data input or analysis. Even so, on Wednesday I walked 13 miles in total, back and forth around Martin Mere!

The great thing for me is that these surveys get me out to otherwise inaccessible parts of the reserve, parts that I could never normally get to and I can see species which would be impossible to see from the hides.

For example, the plant in the photo is blunt-flowered Rush Juncus subnodulosus. This was a new species for me and it's a pretty scarce plant anywhere I think, mainly due to lose of habitat. We only found it growing in one small clump on Outer Vinson's. It may not be high on the list of everybody's must see species at Martin Mere, but for me it was an absolute gem of a find and made the day worthwhile.

Clouded yellows are here!

When it comes to migrant insects there may be some which are more beautiful, there may be some which are rarer, but to my mind there are none more evocative than the clouded yellow butterfly. I'll never forget my dad arriving home from a walk with my mum and immediately going to the butterfly identification book before announcing that they'd just seen at least 50 clouded yellows on the sea wall at Banks, Southport. A few days later I went myself and saw at least ten. That was 31st July 1983 and at the time I'd still never been abroad and I'd never seen them in the UK. These were the first clouded yellows that I'd ever seen and they made a huge impression on me.

I now know that they're pretty common in southern Europe, one of the commonest species in fact, and they're annual migrants to the UK, usually in small numbers to the south and east coast. I've see a few over the years, often in late summer / early autumn when I have been searching for birds at migration hotspots, but living in north west England I can go years without seeing one. I still consider them a very special sight and when they appear in numbers in our area it's an experience not to be missed. "Clouded yellow years" occur every now and then, 1983 must have been one, perhaps also 1992 when I counted 30 at St Bees Head in Cumbria, and it looks like 2026 will be the same. With heatwaves bringing easterly airflows there have been above average reports of species such as red admirals, painted ladies, hummingbird hawk-moths and migrant dragonflies, so it's not surprising that a few clouded yellows are here as well.

In clouded yellow years a few do turn up at suitable spots inland and over the past few days I've been seeing up to five at Bickershaw. It's wonderful to have them just 10 minutes down the road and be able to see them on a daily basis.

However, most reports recently have been from the coast and especially the sea wall north of Crossens, so on Saturday after a morning at Martin Mere I decided to reacquaint myself the butterfly at Banks. I parked at Old Hollow Farm and then walked along the sea wall towards Hesketh Out Marsh. It was a bit windier than I had expected, but even so there were plenty of butterflies on the wing including at least nine clouded yellows. 

It's great how sightings such as this can re-connect you with the past and bring memories flooding back, not just of my parents but also past twitches and holidays abroad. I could have watched those butterflies all day. Hopefully there will be more arriving before the end of the summer, because I can't get enough of them!

Clouded yellows always land with their wings closed, I've never seen one landed with its wings open and the open wing photos in this post are only possible because they are video grabs of a butterfly in flight. I suppose somebody with a much better camera than mine and with more patience could conceivably get a photo just as the butterfly lands or of a brief flick of the wings as it moves around a flower, and using photoshop could "produce" a good photo, but the reality is that photos of clouded yellows with their wings open, whilst not completely fake, are at best very misleading and not the way you will experience them in the field.

Yellow wagtails and black-necked grebe, Pennington flash

Two juvenile yellow wagtails were on the sailing club foreshore this morning, another juvenile black-necked grebe in East Bay and a single green sandpiper in Ramsdales.

Yellow wagtails are not common visitors to the flash, being just about annual. I remember seeing small flocks on passage on the grass where the overflow car park is, but those days have long gone. 

Clouded yellows, Bickershaw

As I reported on Monday, the current run of high pressure and easterly winds is bringing plenty of migrant dragonflies and butterflies to the North West and perhaps the most iconic of the latter is clouded yellow. There's been a few reported locally and today we were delighted to find at least five at Bickershaw in the grasslands between Nevison's and New Water. 

I get really excited when I see this butterfly, there's just something very special about it. In flight they are really deep yellow with a black border to the upperwing, but I don't think I've ever seen one land with it's wings open. Still, the underwing is nice as well, I can see areas of pink, brown and black in the wings and a nice lime green eye.

Just as iconic amongst the migrant dragonflies is lesser emperor, and the two on the stock pond continue to show well.

Caspian tern, Budworth Mere

An adult Caspian tern was at Budworth Mere yesterday but disappeared by midday while I was still at Martin Mere. I wasn't too concerned about missing it because although they're great birds, it is quite a cosmopolitan species which I've seen all over the world on my travels, including Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, USA, Kuwait, Australia and New Zealand, plus I've previously seen a few in the UK including one in the North West at Leighton Moss. So I was very relaxed about it.... 

Then it reappeared this morning and I just dropped everything and went! Why the change in heart I can't say, I just felt like going and I had the time. I left home at 10:55, drove to Budworth Mere, saw the bird, watched it get flushed by a walker and I was home by 12:30. A ninety-five minute return journey!

The photos might be described as record shots by some, perhaps worse than record shots by others, but give me a break, the bird was nearly 400m distant in heat haze. As far as I'm concerned, they're awesome photos and I'm still waiting to see better 😆.

VisMig on Formby beach

I love a bit of visible migration and it was certainly happening at Formby beach on Saturday. I met up with Josh late morning and we walked down lifeboat road to the beach. The tide was receding so we walked out half a mile to the waters edge and then headed south towards Hightown, gradually getting further away from the shore as the tide retreated. Out this far there was a wonderfully cooling easterly breeze and it was a pleasure to be here. 

Once we got away from the Lifeboat road area the beach was deserted, not another person in sight. There were small groups of birds here and there, mainly gulls but also perhaps about 500 noisy sandwich terns including a few juveniles. Numbers of these terns will gradually build into August, and from ringing recoveries they are known to originate from colonies on Anglesey (Cemlyn Bay), Ireland and Cumbria. Otherwise it was very quiet, just a few common terns and hardly any waders.

The beach wasn't completely deserted though. There were loads of butterflies coming in off the sea and every one that I managed to identify was a red admiral, though there were probably also painted lady's involved as well. We saw a single hawker type dragonfly flying low over the beach a good three quarters of a mile offshore, but frustratingly it was silhouetted and flew into the sun before I could identify it, but it's tempting to think lesser emperor or Norfolk hawker given the numbers that are around at the moment. We also saw at least two moths, larger than silver y but not as big as a hawk-moth. As expected nothing landed so identifying individuals to species level as never going to be easy, and although they all made good progress inland, they were buffeted by the wind and following them in binoculars was very difficult.

When these migratory insects are blown west over the water by easterly winds such as we are currently experiencing, they compensate by angling their flight into the wind and returning to the mainland. It's a fabulous experience to walk through it as it's happening. 

Lesser emperors and ruddy darter, Bickershaw

It's been a good year so far for migrant dragonflies with lesser emperors and red-veined darters popping up in lots of places here in the North West. So far I've resisted the temptation to twitch lesser emperor, preferring instead to try to find one locally at Bickershaw, so I was made up today to find not one, but two on the stock pond in the north of the site. 

I've seen them before both in the UK and abroad but I'd forgotten how nice they are with that bright blue saddle and green eyes contrasting with the brown abdomen and thorax. A really special find, bringing my site total to 22 species.