The Wirral...One Of Those Days!!!

I had a choice to make yesterday...Stay fairly local and photograph Red Deer or drive the 50 or so miles to the Wirral and capture some coastal birds.
Having checked the forecast for both locations for a few days leading up to Sunday (bright sunshine) I decided on the Wirral.

I left the house at around 6.30am in darkness and the longer the journey went, the more I noticed that there was a distinct lack of any hint of a sunrise!
On arrival at my first planned stop at West Kirby, I was greeted by a very gloomy looking scene.
In fact not just gloomy, but very cold and windy too!

On the rocks by the Marine Lake, there were various waders roosting which included Turnstone, Dunlin, Knot and Redshank.
Unfortunately without flash and with a shutter speed of 10s at iso1000 I wasn't able to get any decent shots before the birds departed for the shore.

By the time I made it down to the shore, the light had improved enough for me to get some sort of photography out of the trip and with my Wellingtons sinking deep into the very boggy sand I made my way towards some distant feeding Shelduck...

I didn't attempt trying to get any nearer the Shelduck, because there was a real risk of quicksand and I had already prised my boots out of the sand several times up to then!
I next headed (on much firmer ground)  on the fruitless venture of trying to capture some feeding Redshank.

Missing out on the Redshank didn't annoy me as much as missing the Little Egret that had taken to feeding at the spot where I stood photographing the Shelduck!
To be honest, the morning was turning out to be a very frustrating one indeed and despite there being large numbers of birds on the beach, getting close to them was becoming a real problem.

The one highlight at West Kirby yesterday as always, was watching the large flocks of Knot lifting to the sky every time something spooked them...

The sad news is, that on a 5 hour shoot at one of my favourite and most productive locations, the best I could do at getting close to a bird was this Herring Gull...

After spending a very cold and frankly disappointing morning at West Kirby, I decided to move down the coast and try my luck at Parkgate.
Parkgate despite being a birdwatchers paradise is a place where no small amount of luck is required to get decent images and it isn't always the most photographer friendly location.
The trouble with Parkgate is the more interesting subjects are usually quite a fair distance away in the scrapes.

I only stayed an hour or so at Parkgate and after missing out at West Kirby, there was a little consolation after I spotted a distant Little Egret...

By now I had just about had enough for the day and after receiving a phone call telling me how sunny it had been back home, I decided it was time to head back there.
I did however very nearly give into the temptation of stopping off at Burton to try and photograph a reported Glossy Ibis...Sometimes though, you just know when your lucks not in and when to cut your losses!

Formby & Marshside

A 100+ mile round trip to a couple of my favourite haunts proved more than a little bit disappointing today.
If you were to believe the weatherman and unusually I did today, then this part of North West England was just about the only part of the country to be promised long periods of sunshine!

My first stop of the day was Formby Point, where the first couple of hours were spent on a fruitless search for the last remaining Red Squirrels, which although said to be making a slow recovery from the devastating Squirrel Pox Virus, numbers could be as low as 40.

It really is a heartbreaking situation in one of the last remaining 'strongholds' for the species in England and the speed that the disease has spread is frightening.
Here is a photograph I took of a Red at Formby in late March 2008...

On that day, there were dozens of Squirrels seemingly in good health, all around the pine woodland.
I returned in February 2009 and on that cold winter's day the situation looked dire, with notices posted around the site and wardens telling me that no Squirrels had been seen for weeks.

I suppose you have to put your faith in the experts when they say things are improving at Formby, but after visiting the site on a number of occasions in happier times and witnessing the situation twice as it is in the last 12 months, I can't help feeling no small amount of despair at the plight of the Formby Red Squirrel.

My quota of the promised sunshine was used up in the heavily shadowed pine woods at Formby and by the time I had walked the woodland path to the sand dunes and the sea beyond any evidence of clear blue Sky's were long gone!

Coastal bird life was very quiet...Small groups of Oystercatcher and Knot passing overhead looked unremarkable against the dark grey Sky's.

On the shore I was expecting to see Sanderling and Dunlin at least, but had to settle for the odd Herring and Black Headed Gull.

I wasn't overly optimistic when I got in the car and headed up the coast to Marshside on the southern tip of the Ribble Estuary.

Marshside is perhaps my favourite RSPB Reserve and has been good to me over the years, but sometimes you just get that feeling that it's not going to be your day...

Large numbers of wildfowl were as usual present at Marshside, but rather frustratingly from a photography point of view the birds seemed to favour the far reaches of the Mere!

Teal and Wigeon were in abundance, but these birds which would be regarded as 'prize spots' at my local patch are as common as Mallards at this time of the Year in this part of the world.

As I've mentioned before, my 'buzz' is to get the photograph and although it was a pleasure to see a distant Merlin 'raise' large flocks of wildfowl far across the Mere, I still left Marshside on a bit of a downer.

When in this part of the country, I usually always visit Martin Mere as well as Marshside...These two great sites are only a few miles apart, but as the grey sky's became heavier, the first drops of rain fell and already very cold from a biting sea breeze, I decided to call it a day.