Spoonbills on the Wirral

Going to the Uists on my own for two weeks left me shattered - I was out for 12 hours every day, driving, looking through binoculars, taking photos and walking places. With all the intense searching for birds I felt my eyes were dropping out by the end of the trip. So, apart from a couple of very local excursions, I did very little birding for the following week or so.

My first real trip was to Burton Mere Wetlands RSPB on the Wirral, where my main target was to get some shots of the three Spoonbills there. They didn't come really close in the three or four hours I was there, but I was quite pleased with a couple of habitat shots. A Greenshank was also present as well as Avocets with lots of chicks.

Spoonbills have been increasingly regular here over the last few years and I can remember one particular time when there were twelve birds on an island in front of the main Visitor Centre.  This year there are only three birds present up to now and there is hope that they might actually breed here at some point in the future as indeed they do at Fairburn Ings in Yorkshire.

Here's a Spoonbill practicing gathering nesting material at Burton Mere Wetlands RSPB this afternoon. I say 'practicing' because it just kept picking it up sticks and dropping them without ever flying off to the trees.

It always nice to see a Black-tailed Godwit in flight as it makes it much easier to separate from the Bar-tailed species. Once you see the white wing bars you immediately know what it is and don't need to worry about the tail colour, leg length above the 'knee' or indeed anything else.

I was shooting into the sun all afternoon and so many of my shots from today are backlit to some degree, requiring a little shadow reduction to reveal any detail.

I'm pretty sure this Grey Heron was looking for Avocet chicks, of which there were quite a few running round at Burton Mere Wetlands this afternoon. Avocets don't always seem to be the best parents to me, but for once, this bird actually did something to prevent an untimely end for one of its babies.

There used to be a time when Little Egrets were highly twitchable, but nowadays they seem to be two a penny in most places and so often get ignored like Mallards, Collared Doves and other very beautiful common birds. 

But they're a very elegant bird with stunning features such the pure white feather colour, the yellow feet and the sharp black bill. In this photo the wings are so translucent that you can see the bone structure inside!