The Iron Oxide Duke

A walk along the breakwater at Greenfield this morning yielded good numbers of commoner estuarine birds – especially Gulls – all enjoying life loafing on the sand banks and dozing in the spring sunshine.

By my humble reckonings, this stretch between the small dock and the rusting Duke of Lancaster has potential for a good selection of migrants during spring.

The habitat is a mixture of wet grassland, arable, rough pasture and scrub all squeezed between the railway and the estuary. Wheatears in particular would feel at home here, especially today as the farmer – with perfect timing – was busy ploughing one of his fields.

In many ways it is similar to the front at Leasowe and whilst this spot on the North Wirral coast is probably better positioned to receive migrants, Greenfield is much quieter and considerably less disturbed.

I had half expected to find a Wheatear today. I have noticed that a couple have cropped up in Cheshire over the last few days in addition to one or two in North Wales, so surely it wont be too long before one appears on the Dee.

Monday afternoon was spent in the company of John Boswell trying to track down a Crane at F/W Moss. No Crane and very little else to boot. The moss is notoriously home to few birds and yesterday it excelled itself even by its own low standards – there were more birders than birds!

Nevertheless, it was interesting to learn about the hitherto unknown to me Sundew plant. Perhaps not surprisingly given the poor quality soil at the moss, it supplements its diet by other means – eating insects. After swatting up in the evening, I also learnt that Butterworts consume insects too - but according to BBC News there is a third…

The invasive Japanese Knotweed has apparently supplanted (pun intended) Indian Balsam as the gardeners’ nemesis. Not only does it grow at a fantastic rate – but according to the considered opinion of the beeb it is also ‘a real life Triffid.’ Cripes.

Until later.