Birding Group Visit to Tatton Park 22nd January 2012

As it was in January of last year, it was a lovely bright but cold day. The difference this year was that there was lots of snow around and the meres were iced over for a significant part of their area.

. We parked up as usual in the lay-by on Mobberley Road and walked down Mallard Close and over the railway bridge to the south entrance. We walked through Dog Wood where we saw both male and female Great Spotted Woodpeckers, the male drumming loudly and resounding throughout the woods. There were Chaffinches, Robins, Blackbirds and Jackdaws aplenty.As we passed through the woods we also saw a Nuthatch and a small group of Siskins, the latter a first for the year. There were, obviously, also a lot of Blue and Great Tits.

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Birding Group Visit to Hoylake 15th January 2013

After the disappointing visit to Burton Mere Wetlands we decided to rescue the day by driving up to Parkgate and then on to Hoylake. The reason I suggested that we go up to Hoylake was that I had been looking at local sightings on the internet before we set off and had come across a posting on the Dee Estuary Birding web site that mentioned a high tide at Hoylake the day before that had featured tens of thousands of birds whose roost had been pushed up to within a few yards of the promenade at the high tide. The tide was supposed to be reasonably high again today so I suggested to the group that we go there and see if it would be as spectacular today. Since we were only a few miles from there anyway we decided to go just making the briefest of stops at Parkgate en route. There were a few birders at Parkgate but I got the impression that they were – like us – just having a look before setting of for Hoylake. We got to Hoylake around 12.30pm and even before we stopped the car we got a good inkling of what we were in for.

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Birding Group Visit to Burton Mere Wetland 15th January 2013

Our scheduled visit to Burton Mere Wetlands was complicated by the fact that Inner Marsh Farm was closed for continuing work on the pathway to connect it to the main reserve. This happens every Tuesday but does not necessarily mean that there is too much disruption at the main site. However, in addition to this, there was also reed cutting work going on just in front of the main hide at the back of the scrape. This involved about eight people and according to the RSPB volunteers there, all the birds flew off a s soon as the started cutting the reeds. This was particularly annoying as there had been no mention of this on their web site. The upshot was an almost complete lack of birds of any kind on the site.

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Provision Birding Group Schedule for January – March 2013

The provisional schedule worked up at the end of term lunch at Dunham Massey was as follows :

Jan 8: Pennington

Jan 15: Burton

Jan 22: Tatton Park

Jan 29: Marshside/Mere Sands Wood – day trip

Feb 5: Neumann’s Flash

Feb 12: Point of Ayr (12.26 high tide)

Feb 19: Sandbach Flashes

Feb 26: Brockholes Reserve (near Preston)

March 5: Moore (meet at Bittern hide)

March 12: Parkgate: (11.24 high tide)

March 19: Frodsham

March 26: Marbury + lunch

No doubt there will be changes as we go along.

Birding Group Visit To Dunham Massey 11  December 2012

The last day of the birding group “term” was to Dunham Massey where we had a long walk and then everyone stopped over for lunch and a planning session for the next term. It was a very cold but beautifully bright morning with clear blue skies and frost underfoot. We met at the car park from where we started off with a Buzzard on a tree in the near distance and then set off down Farm Walk to the end then turned left on the path and crossed over Main Drive on to the end of Charcoal Drive. We then came main down Charcoal Drive to the main building complex. Continue reading

Birding Group Visit To WWT Martin Mere 4th December 2012

The scheduled visit to Point of Ayr was cancelled because it was felt that thehigh tide was quite late in the day (noon) and that we would do better to go there when high tide was earlier. After much to-ing and fro-ing and it was decided to postpone the trip to enable us to get a day when the tide was higher and earlier in the day. At the moment this looks like it might be March 12th 2013. Anyway it was decided in the end to go to WWT Martin Mere instead. We had been there quite recently but it is always guaranteed to be interesting in one way or another so we were happy enough to go there again.

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