Martin Mere 31.01.10

Had a superb day there! Wasn't sure if we would make it as we woke to an inch of snow which got deeper the further north up the M6 we went! The exit slip was treacherous but as we came down the hill towards Burscough it became thinner again!

Saw lots of birds of course: whooper swans, greylags, pink feet and barnacle geese, shelduck, wigeon, teal, pochard, pintail, mallard, moorhen and coots, fieldfare, blackbird, song thrush, mistle thrush, wren, dunnock, chaffinch, reed bunting, robin, blue tit, great tit, long tailed tit, wood pigeon, collared dove, rock/feral pigeon, house sparrow and tree sparrow, snipe, heron and my first ever ruff! We visited 4 of the 5 hides as we ran out of time before making it to the last one! I took 1007 photos..... and of those, I've deleted over 200 blurred / near misses! Here is a (very small) selection:

Pinkfeet and a handfull of barnacle geese

Juvenile whooper swan

Displaying whoopers - they don't half make a noise!!

male and female pintail

Tree sparrow

Spring song from a blue tit

A plum pudding blackbird!

Dunnock

Foraging wren

A cormorant fly-by spooked the wigeon

Gathering nesting material or foraging for grubs?

A ruff (there were about 12 of them - all different with different coloured legs!!)

Redshank

Some greylags

A grey heron made the most of a bird which had succumbed to the cold....

and we had a nice bit of colour in the sky to finish the day off!

 All in all a very enjoyable day! Shall definitely be returning one day! :-)