Woolston Eyes Open Day : 30th June 2013

Woolston Eyes Open Day : 30th June 2013

For quite some time I have been curious about the Woolston Eyes Reserve near Warrington so when I saw a reference to their “Open Day” (they only have one every four years !) I was keen to go over there and see what it was like. Being a “members only” site it was a rare chance to see if it was as good as I fancied it might be. Of course, it is well known for the uncommon breeding Black-necked Grebes they have there. In fact, I read that they have 25% of all the UK breeding birds on their reserve so the question was would we get this “life tick” or would they prove too elusive ?

As we drove down Thelwell lane we had the Manchester Ship Canal on our left; the reserve itself was originally an ox-bow of the River Mersey which runs on the other side of the road a little way away. Effectively the ox-bow bounds a big island within which are a number of “beds” which the Manchester Ship Canal use for dumping silt from the canal. They do this in rotation and in recent years this has been concentrated on Bed 1. This has allowed the conservation group to manage the other beds. As far as the open day went, members of the conservation group were giving guided walks around Number 3 Bed. This is reached by going over a locked bridge from the road over into the ox-bow. There is a circular route after than in which there are seven hides or viewing platforms of various levels of sophistication. Each overlooks one of the bodies of water or reedbed that have been created. In the central area around which this path is laid out is a very large wild meadows and some woods giving a fantastically diverse habitat. We were told that they plant wild flowers each year in order to attract finches and other birds over winter.

In the nature of the event we were not allowed to tarry too long at any of the hides because there were so many people there that the volunteers were completely inundated. On a later visit we were told by their “recorder” that they had 400 visitors that day and had got 50 new members. The highlight for us was obviously the great views of a couple of families of Black-necked Grebes – a “life tick” for us but there were lots and lots of birds around and it was a great day for it. At a ringing session we saw a Wren “close-up” – in fact inches away as one of the volunteers showed us the ring it had just had put on and pointed out features of the bird’s plumage that were of great interest. They also had a “moth trapping” where they had around twenty different types of moth that had been trapped on the site the night before. Some of them were extraordinary and shows just what a great site this is for nature in general.

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