Black Storks at Gayton Sands, Dee Estuary

I embarked on another spontaneous twitch this morning when news came through that two black storks that had been seen at Parkgate yesterday evening had been seen again in the same area early morning today. I abandoned Pennington Flash immediately and headed to the Old Baths car park at Parkgate, where I arrived an hour later at 9am. I then walked north for about 1km to the viewing area.

The birds were apparently on the ground but in one of the channels on the saltmarsh which combined with the height of the vegetation meant that they were completely out of view despite their size. At least we knew where they were so in theory all that I had to do was stick it out and wait for them to fly, whenever that might be.

Fortunately I didn't have long to wait, after about 45 minutes the shout went up that they were in the air and suddenly there they were, directly out from us, perhaps 500m away and in line with Holywell on the other side of the estuary. That last piece of information is important but I'll get back to that later 😄.....

A really magnificent sight, they circled around climbing higher all of the time, coming as close as 100-200m at times, until finally they were little more than dots and appeared to be heading off east. Except that they didn't go east.

I was surprised at how many people just ignored them and left after the initial sighting. People were packing up and saying "are we off?" and leaving, with the birds still circling overhead. Having made the effort to go I was determined to watch them as long as I could and perhaps see where they went. Pretty soon there were just two of us left, still watching the storks as they suddenly dropped and came down, now heading north before appearing to land behind trees somewhere beyond the golf club. Later in the afternoon, long after I had gone, there were two further reports, again of the birds distantly and briefly on the saltmarsh, confirming that they hadn't left the area earlier. The last report of the day from the Dee was from Burton Mere Wetlands at 13:20, and with a report of two black storks at Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire at 17:30, it looks like this time they really have gone.

These birds were just my second ever sighting of black stork in the UK, the first being on Walney Island in October 1985.

"So why is it so important that the birds were in line with Holywell?", I hear you ask. Go to the end of this post to find out.

Pectoral sandpiper, Hesketh Out Marsh

A cracking adult pectoral sandpiper was on the eastern section of Hesketh Out Marsh today and eventually showed very well. It was originally found on Wednesday, when I did see it but it was a poor view so I went back for seconds today.

At first I thought it had gone, I'd been there two hours with no sign of it. At last it was found asleep in the grass, almost as distant as it had been on Wednesday, and it took another hour or so for it to do much more than the occasional preen. Finally it flew a bit closer and showed very well. A really smart bird!

I love that pec band!

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 this was the type of day 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 hide and for a minute or so I struggled to find 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 and 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 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 😆.