Jan 20 2015
The high tide at Hoylake was not huge – 9.9metres and we were a bit concerned that with high tide due at 10.42am that we wouldn’t have a very satisfactory experience as most of us would get there only an hour before. There was a chance the weather would be foul as well but, as it happened, it turned out to be quite a mild day and, although not a spectacular, it was at least better than I had experienced on the 23rd of December.
Jan 13 2015
We missed the birding group visit to Wigan Flashes on the 6th so our first group session of the year was to Pennington Flashes. Although there were no outstanding sightings, Pennington is always reliable and a good was to get a good start to the annual species list. Goldeneye and Merganser were good winter birds and there were all the usual ducks as well. A kingfisher was a nice bird especially since it perched on a reed for quite some time affording nice views. Some people said they saw a second Kingfisher but I didn’t catch it.
Jan 10 2015
After trying several other ways of blogging on the tab 2 I am wondering if this isn’t the easiest way after all
Waxwing
This works if you tap the bottom right button. With the photo you can also click the bottom right edit button and resize, align and name the photo.
Bold
Italic
Strike through
Underline
Then this has quotation marks around it. Now as long as I can figure out how to send it and add tags I will be happy enough with it.
As it happens I had to use the soft back key on the face of the pad to get back to the main WordPress interface. The blog had been saved as a draft, though, and could be further edited from there by hitting the edit button.
When you return you can tap on the post settings to do other usual stuff to the post
You should bear in mind that if you insert an image that is too large for WordPress, it will not warn you as the desktop version does. Instead it appears to upload the post but when you look at the posts page you see that the app has marked the post as “draft”. This enables you to reduce the size of the image before trying to repost
Dec 31 2014
The tail end of 2013 had seen some great birds (Ross’ Goose, Long-tailed Duck, Two-barred and Common Crossbill, Hoopoe, American Buff-bellied Pipit and Siberian Chiffchaff) but 2014 was not without its great birding days either. We managed twenty life ticks in 2014 and our annual UK list stood at 193 species.
Dec 31 2014
Birding Group Days Out
The first birding group day of December was to Moore Nature Reserve and whilst there was a reasonable smattering of birds, the day was pretty average with one exception, a Tawny Owl – my first ! How strange that, the very next week, at a full day out to WWT Martin Mere we should see another ! Extraordinary, ‘though the second bird was ever better hidden than the first. Nevertheless two Tawny Owls in eight days ! The second Tuesday was also the last birding day of the term so we had our usual post-lunch meeting to knock up a program for the new year.
Dec 30 2014
After reading reports of a Bittern in the reed bed at Budworth Mere for a couple of days, I thought that this could be a great chance to end the birding year (most likely) if I could manage to coincide with this bird. A group of us drove over there and went to the hide overlooking the reed bed getting there around 10 am. No Bittern was to be seen !
Dec 23 2014
To finish off our birding day on the Wirral, after stops at Hoylake for the high tide followed by a visit to New Brighton Marine Lake to see the Purple Sandpipers, we dropped in on Burton Mere Wetlands on the way back. We started off at the reception hide where we got a Black Tailed Godwit and a Spotted Redshank. We walked over to the reedbed hide where we got thee Snipe but, in general, it was far too windy by then for many birds to be around. In fact their bird feeders had suffered quite a bit and were going to need some repairs.
Continue reading
Dec 23 2014
After a bit of a disappointing spell at Hoylake with a rather birdless high tide at Hoylake, I decided that it was worth a shot popping over to New Brighton to look for Purple Sandpipers. I had read that they were to be found at New Brighton but only recently had I discovered that the place to look was the pontoon on the Marine Lake. We parked up and headed straight for the spot. We immediatley spotted some birds that looked likely but on closer examination they appeared to be Turnstones. Continue reading
Dec 23 2014
A last visit to Hoylake for 2014 was for a high tide of 9.7m at 11.45am. Whilst the tide came in as expected and it came in quite far, for some reason the birds did not appear as expected. There were certainly plenty of Oystercatchers and Curlew and plenty of Gulls but there were only half a dozen Redshanks and the same number of Dunlin ! This was very disappointing and I’m not quite sure why this should be the case. Perhaps too much wind ?
Dec 16 2014
With the birding group dates for the term finished, we had a spare Tuesday so we headed out for Burton Mere Wetlands. It was a low tide around midday so a lot of the possible birds were probably nearer the coast but it still had one or two nice highlights including very prolonged views of a ringtail Hen Harrier hunting over the reeds whilst being bothered by a Carrion Crow.