December 23, 2014 archive

Dec 23 2014

Burton Mere Wetlands : 23 December 2014

Burton Mere Wetlands : 23 December 2014

To finish off our birding day on the Wirral, after stops at Hoylake for the high tide followed by a visit to New Brighton Marine Lake to see the Purple Sandpipers, we dropped in on Burton Mere Wetlands on the way back. We started off at the reception hide where we got a Black Tailed Godwit and a Spotted Redshank. We walked over to the reedbed hide where we got thee Snipe but, in general, it was far too windy by then for many birds to be around. In fact their bird feeders had suffered quite a bit and were going to need some repairs.
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Dec 23 2014

Purple Sandpipers at New Brighton Marine Lake : 23rd December 2014

Purple Sandpipers at New Brighton Marine Lake : 23rd December 2014


After a bit of a disappointing spell at Hoylake with a rather birdless high tide at Hoylake, I decided that it was worth a shot popping over to New Brighton to look for Purple Sandpipers. I had read that they were to be found at New Brighton but only recently had I discovered that the place to look was the pontoon on the Marine Lake. We parked up and headed straight for the spot. We immediatley spotted some birds that looked likely but on closer examination they appeared to be Turnstones. Continue reading

Dec 23 2014

High Tide at Hoylake : 23rd December 2015

High Tide at Hoylake : 23rd December 2015

A last visit to Hoylake for 2014 was for a high tide of 9.7m at 11.45am. Whilst the tide came in as expected and it came in quite far, for some reason the birds did not appear as expected. There were certainly plenty of Oystercatchers and Curlew and plenty of Gulls but there were only half a dozen Redshanks and the same number of Dunlin !  This was very disappointing and I’m not quite sure why this should be the case. Perhaps too much wind ?

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