February was the wettest on record with flooding in lots of areas of the country. Although Manchester got it relatively well, it did put a damper on the birding for most of the month. Additionally, Anne still had a cast on her broken wrist and I still had a bad leg. This meant that we only had two birding days out in all of February. Both were for high tides but this one, on the 25th, was nowhere near as dramatic as that of the 11th. It was compensated for by some nice bird of prey sightings though.
The high tide was 9.3 metres at 12:15pm but there was nowhere near the amount of wind as on the 11th. At Hoylake the sea was always a way out and there seemed to be very few birds on the shore. There were Grey Plover, Knot and Dunlin, but all in smaller numbers than usual. It was bitterly cold and I was glad when we headed off for Parkgate.
Continue reading