Woke to bright blue skies and hoped that the forecast for heavy cloud was wrong. I had heard that the avocets had returned to Marshside and so whilst taking my children to Southport wanted to pay it a visit. Sadly, when only half way there it was evident that the forecast had indeed been correct and the sun swiftly disappeared, never to be seen for the rest of the day. Marshside is a coastal reserve on the north west coast just above Southport. The salt lagoons and marshes are home to many species of ducks and waders and its speciality in the summer are the avocets. In recent years these birds have bred successfully and numbers have increased dramatically.

Upon arriving the first birds to be seen were ducks. Ducks were everywhere the majority of which were wigeon, with smaller numbers of pochard and teal. Waders included redshank, curlew and black tailed godwit. Lapwings were also displaying energetically, circling and wheeling above us. Mute swans and greylag geese also grazed nearby but the coveted avocet were nowhere to be seen.

 

Thankfully reports of avocets down the far end of the reserve proved fruitful and we eventually got good views from Nells hide. Twenty avocet had been reported. Several could be seen in the middle distance but only two were close enough to give reasonable views. The female could be seen in the by now familiar submissive pose low over the water waiting for the male to mount her. The male who was busily preening by her side seemed to pay her no regard and I grew tired of waiting for the moment. Then as so often happens the coupling took place the moment I looked away and if it were not for the quickest of reflexes on my part I would have missed the opportunity to photograph this intimate moment.

After their mating they parted company and went back to feeding and not long afterwards they flew and joined the other avocets. Soon the group will split and nesting will begin Then hopefully we will get some much closer views of these elegant birds. Other birds to be seen down this end of the reserve where yet more wigeon and teal joined by plenty of tufted duck, shoveler, pintail and shelduck. Numbers of black tailed godwit and golden plover were also high and although they didn’t give close views we were able to watch enormous flocks of both species as they regularly took to the skies.

Later in the afternoon we visited Southport Marina. At this time of year you never quite know what to expect. Even though we didn’t see anything unusual we had some good views of most gull species as well as excellent close up views of adult and juvenile cormorant.