Armed with detailed site information courtesy of Pete, I arrived at Crosby at 7am and headed north towards Hightown. It was a glorious morning and the sea was flat calm like a beautiful blue mirror, and Sandwich terns were flying back and forth all along the coast in good numbers. Hightown is at the southern end of the Sefton dune system which starts at Ainsdale in the north and includes Formby. You can't access Formby beach from Hightown because the River Alt gets in the way, and this allows a decent wader and tern roost to build up undisturbed on the far side of the river at high tide. In effect though, the sand you are viewing on the other side of the river from Hightown is the southern end of Formby beach.
When I arrived I could see that there were thousands of birds present this morning, an estimated 4000 Sandwich terns in fact, as well as good numbers of common and Arctic terns. Gulls included little gull and at least 4 Mediterranean gulls, 2 adults and 2 juveniles. Waders in the roost included at least 100 curlew and a single whimbrel.
Several birders had apparently looked for the Elegant tern from here on Tuesday evening to no avail, so I guess that might have deterred others from turning up this morning but whatever the reason, I was once again alone and it looked as though I'd have to find the bird for myself. My initial scan through the flock wasn't promising. Yes the light was perfect and yes the bird has a stonking great yellowy / orange bill which stood out like a beacon in the Cemlyn colony, but the nearest group of terns to me was at least 150m away and other groups were two or three times that distance, and many birds had their heads tucked in asleep or were facing away from me or were hidden behind other birds. On my own it was always going to be tough and by 8:30am I was beginning to think that it was going to be another frustrating morning. I put out a negative tweet, informing the world that there was no sign of the elegant tern at Hightown.
Just as I sent the tweet, another birder appeared from nowhere and asked me if I'd seen the bird. He and his mate had been standing on the yacht club lawn and seen me 100m away and he'd decided to walk over and ask. I told him that I hadn't and we had a brief chat before his phone rang; it was his mate telling us that he had found the elegant tern! I was cautiously optimistic at this point, having experienced at least three false alarms over the past few days when people called the bird only for it to be a misidentified common tern. However we legged it back over to him and sure enough this was the real deal and he got us onto it pretty quick.
Wow, what a bird! No chance that this was a misidentified common tern with a bill like that! The relief was amazing and I did a little dance inside. Unimpressed the bird immediately tucked it's head in and went to sleep. Now it would have been virtually impossible to pick out if you didn't know where it was and after five minutes even we were beginning to question if we were on the right bird. Within a few minutes though, it was awake again and started walking around and even displaying to a Sandwich tern. Fortunately it was in the near group of terns about 120m away so about as good a view as could be expected.
It might not have been as close as it was when it was at Cemlyn, but for me it was a far more thrilling experience. At Cemlyn you could just walk up to it and you knew it would be there. Ok it might have been out fishing but still, you knew it was only a matter of time before it returned, it even had it's favourite rock to perch on. You just had to focus on the rock and wait for it to return.
Formby beach is a totally different proposition. It could have been anywhere on miles and miles of beach, and to see it on migration, travelling with the Sandwich terns from Cemlyn at a known stopping off place was just fantastic, the essence of quality birding for me!
We watched the bird for an hour during which time we were joined by another two birders, until eventually the whole flock flushed for some reason and though most birds landed again we couldn't relocate the elegant tern. To be honest after 15 hours looking I wasn't in the mood to try to relocate it and in any case I knew that even if we did find it, it could only be a worse view than we had already had. I decided that I'd had enough and walked back to the car, reflecting on a thoroughly enjoyable few days. What an experience it had been!
No comments:
Post a Comment