With high tides forecast this weekend, it could be good for seawatching in the Mersey this weekend, so thanks to Steve Young for sending me these stonking shots of seabirds he has watched in the Mersey mouth over the years.
I reckon the Leach's shot is the best I've ever seen, and the arctic and long tailed skuas ain't bad either!!!
Piercing drizzle low to the waves made an early morning seawatch near impossible off Crosby marine lake yesterday morning.
Barry McCarthy and Simon Jackson texted me yesterday afternoon while seawatching off Formby Point when they had juv Sabine's Gull flying south and the more expected manxies.
For any birders/naturalists heading for southern Spain in the future, this trip report of our adventures earlier in the year may be of some help....then again it may not _ you maybe better going to Surfbirds....
I take no responsibility for exaggeration, porky pies and licence used by John Bannon in the compilation of this report, but at least the bird accounts are correct. The photos are by Neill Hunt, and any childish field sketches which may appear are by me (I don't think Lars Jonsson has much to worry about).
Visitors to Marshside just outside Southport could be forgiven for being confused by new signs for the reserve, promoting a "wetland wilderness."
Zipping in through the mist this morning, a fine barn owl was hunting by the roadside at the crossroads by the Jospice at Thornton near Crosby at 5.30am.
Details of RSPB cruises into Liverpool Bay...last year they scored with long tailed skua, an intermediate morph juv bird which spent several weeks zooming around the entrance to the Mersey off Crosby/Seaforth.
Can you be too young to start birding? How else can you get someone into the field without getting them young...
If I wore a big floppy puritan's hat and lived a few hundred years ago, I know how I'd pronounce on the mobile phone (always assuming Nokia had worked out how to build one then).
Mixed feelings when you have to go to work and all you can see is the trees at the bottom of the garden bendiing over in the wind and grey clouds scudding in off the Irish Sea.
After weeks of tearing around after terns, it was good to spend some time in the garden at the weekend _ Saturday night was dry and mild enough for a spot of mothing too.