On the 28th of March, I joined the volunteers of the RSPB to go on a bird-watching walk near Blackpool. Valerie was the chief host, but we had a few other volunteers including Ken and Michael, who were knowledgeable and helpful as well, and about 8-9 members who accompanied us. We met at the Wyre Country Park near Stannah, a suburb of Thornton. To reach there, I took a cab from the hospital, as I was going there directly from having completed my night duty.
We began the walk down the Wyre river on a track specially made for birdwatching. A few of the members and Ken had telescopes that we used to identify and observe waders and river-swimming birds. We saw ducks, geese, gulls and a few other birds as we walked. It was a relaxed walk where we even got to admire the bushes and flowers around us. For example, I first came to identify the gorse bush with its distinctive, small yellow flowers.
There would be high-tide within a few hours, so, after a hour-long walk which took us to a spot on the track where the water was already advancing on to the track, we decided to turn back and to walk back to the country park, where we took a break for lunch. I decided to eat in the cafe located here. They had an option to have chicken tikka masala with rice - which was actually quite nice. I do think, though, that they serve a very small portion of rice to go with the large amount of chicken. A cup of coffee to round off my lunch, and I was back with the others to proceed on the second part of the journey. This time, we would drive to the Fleetwood Marsh Natural Reserve at - where else - Fleetwood. The person who would take me in their car was one Mr Graham, and he and I had interesting conversations as we reached the marsh. I used Google Maps satnav to reach the location, and it took us there without an error.
At the marsh, we passed by a pool with a lot of water birds, and then on to the actual marsh, where, unfortunately, the river was quite a distance away, so we saw very few birds in the water. However, we did see some shells of whelk snails, and, on the way back to the parking lot, we saw and photographed wheatears that were hovering around at the back of the reserve over a steel stile.
Graham then gave me a lift back to the hospital. We exchanged emails and promised to stay in touch. It had indeed been a great day. The big takeaways from today's activities were:
- Meeting new people. I met Maureen, Graham, Ken, Jim, Michael, Valerie and one more person whose name I cannot recall now. We had four others, but as they did not accompany us in the afternoon, I did not get the chance to learn their names.
- Hearing a lot of bird calls that I struggled to learn. Among them, the easiest was the call of the chiff-chaff, which is, to be honest, exactly as if the bird uttered the two syllables "chiff" and "chaff" repeatedly; we also heard the song thrush, the goldfinch, the curlew, and a few others.
- Sighting some birds for the first time, such as goldfinches, the egret, the wheatear (well, it was the first time in the U.K. - I have seen them as the "Northern" wheatear in Al Muwayh in Saudi Arabia) and a few others.
Here are a few pictures I took:
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| Greater black-backed gulls |
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| A herring gull takes flight |
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| Adults and chicks of herring gulls |
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| Tufted duck, female |
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| Tufted duck, male |
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| Wheatears |
That's it for now. Do write in the comments how you found this post.
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