High tide at Hoylake 20th January 2015
The high tide at Hoylake was not huge – 9.9metres and we were a bit concerned that with high tide due at 10.42am that we wouldn’t have a very satisfactory experience as most of us would get there only an hour before. There was a chance the weather would be foul as well but, as it happened, it turned out to be quite a mild day and, although not a spectacular, it was at least better than I had experienced on the 23rd of December.
The tide came in reasonable far and there were a couple of hundred Knot (it’s hard to estimate, perhaps it was more) and similar numbers of Dunlin putting on an occasional show. There were quite a few Grey Plovers and amongst them was the breeding plumage male we saw last year still looking very dark.
We only stayed about an hour because it was a bit so so and I had mentioned the possibility of seeing Purple Sandpiper at New Brighton. Quite a few of the group had not seen this bird before so we decided to go on there and try to locate them.
Bird Sightings : Hoylake
| Species | Count |
|---|---|
| Common Shelduck | 40 |
| Great Cormorant | 100 |
| Eurasian Oystercatcher | 400 |
| Grey Plover | 40 |
| Common Redshank | 4 |
| Eurasian Curlew | 40 |
| Red Knot | 200 |
| Sanderling | 20 |
| Dunlin | 300 |
| Black-headed Gull | 200 |
| Herring Gull | 30 |
| Lesser Black-backed Gull | 2 |
| Great Black-backed Gull | 4 |
| Pied Wagtail | 1 |