February 22, 2015 archive

Laughing Gull at New Brighton : 22nd February 2015

Laughing Gull at New Brighton : 22nd February 2015

After getting lucky with the Long-eared Owl at Burton Mere Wetlands, we decided to head off to New Brighton for the last high tide day of February (10.1 metres at 1.27pm). We got there around 1pm so we had half an hour before high tide. As it happens the tide was already well in and people were fishing off the prom so I suppose the tide comes in about 90 minutes before the Liverpool Gladstone Docks time. We had experience of how hard it is to find a parking space in New Brighton at the weekend so I suppose it was good for us that it had turned to a windy and drizzly day and the place was not quite as busy. We eventually found a parking spot (the majority of parking places are reserved for the disabled but nobody seems to pay the slightest attention to these notices) and hoped we would get lucky.

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Long-eared Owl at Burton Mere Wetlands : 22nd February 2014

Long-eared Owl at Burton Mere Wetlands : 22nd February 2014

While we were on holiday in Lanzarote I had been monitoring some of the sightings in and around Manchester and two in particular jumped out at me. The first was a roosting Long-eared Owl that had been at Burton Mere Wetlands and the second was a Laughing Gull that had been seen on the Marine Lake pontoon at New Brighton. With it being the last high tide day of February (10.1 metres at 1.27pm) and the weather threatening to take a turn for the worse it felt like a good time to try for these birds before they disappeared.

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