High Tide on the Wirral – 5th November 2016

A high tide of 9.9 metres at 11:27am took us up to the Wirral where we dropped in at Hoylake, Rivebank Road, Denhall Old Quay and Burton Mere Wetlands. There haven’t been many high proper tides this year so this was a good chance to see what we could see in the way of waders and sea birds.

We got to Hoylake a little late and the tide was already a long way in. There were the usual largish numbers of Oystercatchers but the Dunlin were quite low numerically. It was a SUnday so, of course, there was a lot of disturbance from dog walkers so this didn’t help. Perhaps the best feature, however, was the presence of good numbers of Grey Plover who seemed to be less likely to take to the air when dogs approached – perhaps because they stand further out into the water. There were good close views of Sanderling as well.

From here we drove down to Riverbank Road just in time to get very good views of an adult male Hen Harrier. Although there have been reports of the Short-eared Owls back in good numbers on the marsh, we didn’t see any – perhaps because it was quite wet. We also got a Great White Egret flying into the distance.

Next was Denhall Old Quay at Little Neston which was pretty quiet and nobody we met had seen owls.We had a sandwich anyway and headed off to Burton.

We had a walk out to the Marsh Covert Hide one way and the barn the other way but that was the extent of our walking in a rather damp day.

We got Cattle Egret and Little Egret to add to our Great White Egret of earlier in the day. A couple of Cetti’s Warblers were rattling off and there were the usual finches and tits. The usual ducks and Godwits were around a nd we got a single Greenshank and a Goosander which it seems is rather rare there. part from that it was fairly quiet and we decided to call it a day rather than risk getting wet going down to Inner Marsh Farm.

So not a spectacular day but an adult male Silver Hen Harrier and three species of Egret are still pretty good/