Psilos
Bird Journal |
Sunday November
19th 2006 |
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"Winter
waders " |
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Once again I wanted
to return to the high tide wader roost at West Kirby in an attempt to
find and photograph some Knot. I had only ever seen knot in huge flocks
in the far distance and wanted to get up close in order to study them
in more detail. High tide was around 9.45am but sadly my efforts at
getting out of bed early enough did not come up to scratch and with
a sinking heart I realised that we had arrived too late. The roost is
situated on the marine lake and come the weekend they have to share
the space with dozens of windsurfers and speed boats. As we arrived
I noticed that there was a good number of Redshank, Dunlin,Turnstone
and indeed my target bird for the day, Knot. but as we made our way
over my heart sank for bearing down at high speed was a very large speed
boat. |
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For a larger version click HERE |
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As predicted all
the birds flew up and I had to take quick advantage and take a few flight
shots. Two thirds of the birds kept on flying and went elsewhere but
small numbers of dunlin and knot did return. Watching the knot it was
obvious that they were not as easily spooked as the Dunlin and Redshank.
More boats came and went and the dunlin flew away so that there was
only a handful of birds left. The first bird always to return was the
Knot. |
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At first sight the
knot appears to be avery drab grey bird but if caught in the right light
their feathers almost shine. |
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Dunlin are much
more jittery and easily spooked. They constantly call to one another
and are very quick to take flight. |
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The dunlin in the
photo above was a feisty litte guy. The knot on the right was trying
to rest but the Dunlin was having none of it. Repeatedly he kept jabbing
him with his beak. In the end the Knot won out and the Dunlin moved
on. |
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With alot of the
waders gone my attention was drawn to birds further out on the lake.
The screech of a juvenile gull alerted me to a pair of cormorant fishing.
One cormorant had caught a very large flatfish and the gull wanted it
for himself. Desperatly trying to get away from the gull and the other
cormorant the bird dived. Whether he got his meal in the end or the
fish got away I do not know. |
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| There were plenty of Cormorants around and as they fly passed I can never resist photographing them. The white on the belly and throat shows this is a juvenile bird. | ||
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Another relative of the Cormorant is the Shag. Until I started visiting Kirby I had never seen them on the open sea before. They seem to be plentiful in these waters. Much smaller than the Cormarnt and quite approachable. Goldeneye and Red breasted Mergansers were other birds that we saw at West Kirby. The Goldeneye could be seen flying over the sea. A couple of birds landed on the marine lake but were very skittish and flew off almost immediatly. Two mergansers flew over relatively close but on both times I was ill prepared and rather sickeningly missed both shots. |
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Very quickly the tide started
to go out and the moment for photographing waders close too was gone.
Driving down to Hoylake we found alot of Redshank feeding on the beach.
With their shrill piping alarm calls these birds are impossible to get
close too. However the light was, for a short while very beautiful and
so I had to console myself with some shots taken at quite some distance.
Not really a bad way to end a very fruitful day. |
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