Marshside does it again!
As the Autumnal season progresses and the trees start to drop their ever increasing orange and yellow jewels, the magnificent wetland habitat at Marshside has drawn in yet another fabulous wader. The Lesser Yellowlegs observed at the beginning of the week, was giving spotters fantastic views feeding close to the fences on Crossens Inner Marsh. Lesser Yellowlegs is a North American breeder and whilst it's relatively rare it's simultaneously not unusual for a small number of these birds to end up on our shores at some point in the Autumn, in actual fact one had been observed at our neighbouring site of Leighton Moss the week before. It's entirely feasible that this could be the same bird. Lesser Yellowlegs is a wader a little smaller than a Redshank (one wonders why it's not called 'Yellowshank' in-keeping with red and green?) it's Latin name of "Tringa flavipes" giving the origin of it's name, where "flavus" means yellow and "pes" refers to feet.
The photo taken by RSPB ecologist Gavin Thomas shows just how close the bird is to the fencing. Described by many as giving "crippling views". Once again this bird demonstrates just how great this land is for waders, which is exactly what our ecology and site wardening team work so hard for.
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Wader Wanderings at Fairhaven
We embarked on another of our joint guided walks with Ribble Bird Tours on Wednesday. The early rain of the morning passed through and the sun shone. It was however incredibly windy, but no matter. The tide came sweeping in with increased alacrity and with it the movement of wading birds was intense. We started the walk looking at just what it is about the estuary that attracts these huge numbers of waders here every year, getting up close to some of it's smallest inhabitants, the hydrobia snails, loved and consumed in their millions by Shelduck. Continuing the walk, the flocks of waders were plentiful, moving around as they were pushed off the flats by the incoming seawater. As the tide encroached onto the saltmarsh Snipe were flushed and Dunlin ran to the edge of the dune system along with Reed Bunting, Stonechat and Linnets taking to the air.
We have a number of scheduled walks coming up, of which will all be advertised on the website. Our series of walks with Ribble Bird Tours continues culminating this year with the Christmas Wildlife walk to Lytham Quays on 27 December. We are also offering two 'Beginners Wader Identification Workshops' with another of our expert volunteer guides, John. These will also take in a high tide and offer some simple identification tips to get you started in learning "What's that Wader?"
All guided walks are bookable via the website and it is recommended and highly advised that this is the process to follow when booking. In the event of last minute changes or cancellations due to weather it makes it much easier to enable us to get touch with everyone.
Finally...
As Christmas edges ever closer we have some great sustainable ideas in the form of wrapping paper, cards and crackers. Avoiding glittery paper, which is non recyclable we have wrapping paper that is sustainably sourced and made out of recycled paper and even the shrink wrap is fully compostable. Similarly Christmas cards are also produced on sustainably sourced card and are also fully recycled as are our crackers. Instead of wasteful plastic gifts our crackers contain more useful and eco friendly gifts. My favourite being the pin badge crackers. The RSPB have been selling pin badges to raise funds since 1990 and this year's Christmas crackers contain 6 unique Christmas versions.
Why not pop into the shop to see how you can make your Christmas more eco-friendly?
Jo
Lesser yellowlegs by Gavin Thomas, waders in flight and shop stock by Jo Taylor