Some fascinating e-mails bouncing about at the mo about the effects of the deluge this week, but it was Downholland Man who suggested I should pop out and have a gander at the mosses, where things are getting a tad out of hand compared to normal water levels.
Zipped onto Downholland from work tonight and after the second bridge from the Formby side was confronted by a vast lake, where only the road (barely) and a few hay bales rose above the flood.
This is what the mosses must have looked like pre-pumping era every winter.
Many confused Red Legs and Pheasants, plus about 110 smug looking Mallards, 29 Wigeon, 31 Canada Goose and 3 Gadwall.
Hirundines in pig heaven zipping about picking off insects.
If anything the water levels are too high for anything other than quackers here, so I moved onto Plex (everyone knows it is the coolest of the mosses), where the flooding was less severe.
Now I recognise this type of mullarkey is a nightmare for our farming community, but Plex looks like it has some mighty fine wader potential if the water stays for a few days - lots of exposed soil (unlike Downholland) and shallow edges around the floods, so that on the field directly west of the Station Road fork, 350 Lapwing, 2 Dunlin, 1 Ringed Plover and a Curlew Sandpiper were feeding, when not freaked by Common Buzzards.
Pretty mega for Plex.
Think it's the first time I've seen Curlew Sand on Plex, but in the gathering dusk, yet another distant low light pants wader shot was the best I could muster.
Both crisp juv Little Stints were on Ainsdale Beach again today (north end), and Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell and Migrant Hawker were on the wing.
Perhaps the most remarkable sight of the day though was an island of five15-20ft saplings in full leaf drifting north offshore at Ainsdale at 0800, still attached to the bank they grew out of before it was washed away from some flood ravaged riverside.
Naturally I checked the distant floating mass for exhausted transatlantic vagrants, but no joy.
It broke up and beached between Ainsdale and Birkdale later in the day, when a Peregrine used it as a handy lookout.
Eyes to the skies everyone, eyes to the skies...
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Pennington Flash 28th Sept. still quite flooded. At least 3 Willow Tit. Male/female Bullfinch. Several groups of Long-Tailed Tit. 4 Jays flying over.
9 Grey Partridge in a stubble field next to New Causeway, Altcar Moss today nice to see them outnumbering the Red Legs there.
Also a few days back a Red Squirrel was in a copse next to Moss Rd, Churchtown Moss.
I must be Quackers to keep doing this.....
Formby Point seawatch, 0830-1145:
Common Scoter 500+
Velvet Scoter 1 male
Eider 3
Scaup 4
Red-breasted Merganser 1
Fulmar 3
Gannet 1
Mediterranean Gull 1
Common Tern 1
Razorbill 2
Here in the deepest depths of Walton at noon 100 vociferous Pinkfeet headed northwards,later as I whizzed towards Runcorn on the M57 I counted 10 Jays flying over, meanwhile at Pickerings Pasture this afternoon a fresh looking female Meadow Brown was feeding on a Buddleia.
I saw the two Little Stints at the "newest" Green Beach yesterday - very nice and quite vocal.
Extensive flooding everywhere following last week's deluge.
Freshfield Dune Heath ponds are full to the brim, with shallow surface water in the central part of the heath.
Slack 47 ponds and the Green Beach slacks are also 20-30cm above the previous week's level.
I hope to visit Ainsdale LNR and Devil's Hole this week to check levels.
The latter site was last flooded in the spring of 2008.