We had a spare day available to us and thought we would go up to the Wirrall for a slightly high tide to see if we could get any raptors. High tide wasn’t until around 1pm however, so we thought we would take a punt at looking for a juvenile Rose-coloured Starling (or Rosy Starling) in St Helens, about half an hour away, first. The bird was just a juvenile but we had searched long and hard for one in the Highland a while back (29th July 2017 at Embo) and this definitely seemed like an easier prospect. But we still had to locate the bird – seemilngly lurking in some ivy and brambles in a garden at the back of Fryday’s Chip Shop near Baxter’s Lane in St Helens.
We parked up at the top of the lane near the roundabout and had a chat with a birder sitting in his car looking at a flock of Starlings flying around but he hadn’t seen our target bird. We decided to follow instructions and find the Chip Shop. as we set out a couple of birders in another car stopped and directed us to where it was. As it turned out our original idea was spot on so we turned left and left again and found the well hidden chip shp and at the side of it was a small lane and at the end of that lane a birder with camera happily snapping the bird when it decided to show itself properly.
When we first sighted it it had its back turned to us which was interesting because we got good views of the details of the wing and tail. Then it turned a bit so that we could see the very light chin and, eventually, turned into profile giving us much better views. We spent a good amount of time looking at this life tick for us and noted that is was actually quite tw-tone despite being a juvenile and it looked much more like a thrush than a starling which was not what we expected.
We were very pleased with this start to the day and happily instructed another birder who was a bit lost, how to find the bird. It is always nice to pass a bird on to someone else. From here we took the unusual (for us) route over the Mersey to rejoin the M56 at Frodsham. We decided on a quite top-over at Burton Mere Wetlands to see what was there before heading up to Riverbank Road.
As usual, Pete Hines put a good video of the bird on Youtube
The Bird was found at
SJ 5258 9370 or
what3words link to precise location of Rose-coloured Starling
