Bird Guides had been showing both a Red-necked and a Grey Phalarope on Frodsham Marsh so we drove out to see what we could. There had only been the one sighting of a Grey so either it was an error or it moved on quickly. There was more chance of the Red, however, as it had been reported a few times and, as we drove up there, another report came in of the bird on tank 3. We had to give it a go.
This was the firs time we had been at Frodsham since Peel Holdings had installed the wind farm and it had made a big change, not least because of the noise of the turbines which broke the usual quiet of the marsh. We rathe rhoped that some more hard core might have been put down for the trucks on the road leading up to tank 3 but it rather looked as if the road had been made wose to deter birders. The incredible pot holes were made even more difficult by being filled with rain water which meant that you could not really see how deep they were. Needless to say they were very deep.
It was about a 2.5 km walk from where we could park and the rain was threatening to start to we risked the drive and eventually got to tank 3 where we could see the bird spinning away even from the car. The scoped views very very good but it was hard get a decent bit of scoped video on my phone because it was constantly on the move, not only revolving baut also moving quitr fast from side to side. We had very good views though and we didn’t meet anyone who had seen a Grey Phalarope.
While we were there we also got Kestrel and Buzzard and on our drive back down we also got a pair of Marsh Harriers. We stopped half way back down the road at the pull in. The water there only covers about a third of the tank, the rest being dried out. Nevertheless there were good numbers of Black-tailed Godwits and some Shelduck and Shoveler.
We drove back down to near the entrance and did the hairpin turn to go to the usual parking place when we walk to to the Weaver Bend. We managed to get a few Raven there but we opted not to walk to the Weaver, partly because it seemed to extraordinarilly high but also because rain was [redicted and it is muddy at the best of times. After a few days of torrential rain we did not fancy it so returned home. A quick coule of hours but we did get our target bird and very good ciews as well.
Bird Sightings : Frodsham Marsh
| Common Shelduck | 1 |
| Northern Shoveler | 4 |
| Eurasian Marsh Harrier | 2 |
| Common Buzzard | 1 |
| Black-tailed Godwit | 40 |
| Red-necked Phalarope | 1 |
| Common Kestrel | 1 |
| Common Raven | 4 |
| Great Tit | 3 |
| Eurasian Blue Tit | 2 |
| Common Starling | 10 |
| European Goldfinch | 24 |