Following on from our afternoon at Martin Mere—and tasty burgers—we dropped in to Marshside to bump up the day’s total in the gathering gloom. The first bird we saw on Rainford’s Lagoon was a Great Crested Grebe; reasonably common at other nearby locations (such as the estuary and the sea!) this is nontheless an extremely rare bird on the reserve itself. Probably poorly?

In the same binocular view was a Tufted Duck. The med gulls that we’d hoped to see in the background were instead visible from the slots by Sandgrounders, so they probably don’t have a nest at the back of Rainford’s after all. Also visible there: Mute Swan and Gadwall. From Fairclough’s platform we added Wigeon and black tailed godwit, although by this time it was pretty much dark. No sign of commuting Cormorants or egrets, and we were a couple of ducks short of what we’d hoped for, so today’s haul is not going to be an entry in the current bird race.

I don’t think 56 is bad for an afternoon where we weren’t even trying, and we could have added a few more: there were birds that only I spotted (Wren, Common Tern, Red-legged Partridge); birds that were heard but not seen (Chiffchaff, Sedge Warbler), a probable Marsh Harrier that may have been a buzzard, but to get us to the 80-odd that I would have deemed respectable I think we’d have had to get out in the morning.