Arctic Waders and Icicles at Heysham Head.

If our proximity to the sea has denied me the pleasure of walking in the snow here in Lancaster, I thought, after throwing my Wildlife Monitoring Techniques “The Bird Survey” and “The Insect Survey” into the drop box at the University, the culmination of months of fairly to moderately hard work and procrastination, I may as well go for a walk  by the sea. 

Song Thrush at Heysham.

I drove to the prettier end of Heysham, the Port Town  Morecambe, and parked up outside the Half Moon Beach Cafe, the one with the disconcerting flags, and stood where the road turns to approach the port, and the two imposing structures which are the two nuclear power stations. Heysham itself remains in the running for a third, but it would, it seems, take a lot of destruction to squeeze in such a building on this site, where archaeological remains, caravan sites, an active port and huge flocks of wading birds are already pressed together.   I do not know which other Northern sites are in the running for the dubious honour, and nuclear seems like a grubby compromise, with the emphasis on the grubby, for the future of energy, but Heysham doesn’t need it.

View of Heysham Power Stations.

A song thrush hopped about and posed for a couple of photos on the bank near the fence, and a cluster of Knot huddled together against the biting cold.  The grey winter plumage of the Knot, Red Knot in acknowledgement of their rust coloured breeding plumage, and their hunched posture against the wind, just seems fitting on such an icy day. Appropriately too, these birds breed in the arctic. Even their scientific name, Caladris canutus, invoking the Norse king Knut, speaks of wintry coastlines and the power of the tide which governs their lives. .  The breeze was not strong  but it was bitter. Smaller Turnstones had a different strategy, busily gathering food, picking about among the pebbles. A flock of finches flew in from over the two imposing cuboid power stations. I got breifly excited, scanning their number for some of the elusive passerines, Snow Buntings and Twite, which sometimes use this coast when the cold weather forces them off their more normal, upland habitats. They can deal with the rocky substrate. The birds turned out to be greenfinches, and they foraged in the bushes. I walked down the beach. The water flowing out of the red soil had formed large icicles, like vitreous stalactites,  which hung from the subtle overhangs of the eroding sections at the top of the beach, as if just to underline the fact it was cold.

Icicles.

A flock of noisy, piping little birds flew in low over the waves.   My binoculars revealed them to be Ringed Plovers, with bold black masks on their faces and dark collards. These smart, and inevitably cute little birds looked hardly resilient to the cold, but they joined the foraging turnstones in frenetic activity on the beach. I walked up onto Heysham Head, the green promontory of land with National Trust signs on it. Wrens hissed angrily in the bushes, there were several of these feisty little birds of the scrub around.  How tiny bodied birds cope with the ice is a constant source of wonder, but they do.

I kept my eye on the rocks below. A couple of curlews sat with their heads and long beaks under their wings, with turnstones at their feet, and a ringed plover wandering about. One looked up, irritated by the small birds, and eventually took off over the waves. I scanned the surface of the sea, hoping for some interesting sea birds seeking the shelter of Morecambe bay, or better still a dark dorsal fin rising out of the water. I saw no fin, but a little crowd of Oystercatchers, black with white bands on their wings, which flew around the headland and settled somewhere out of sight.  Distant gulls were Common Gulls, far from the commonest of gulls, but winter visitors to most of England and largely breeding birds of further North than this, marked out by the big white mirrors in their black-tipped primaries.  A brown bird over the water turned out to be one of the sleepy curlews, perhaps irritated into flight by busy Turnstones.

Wakey Wakey!
Note the Ringed Plover at the bottom left. I knew he was there when I took the photo. Honest!

I walked up to the top, close to the chapel of St Patrick, a ruin which stands on the top of Heysham head, overlooking the town of Morecambe and its promenade, with its mysterious open stone graves, hewn into the rock, presumably the reason the head has been spared from industry and providing the interest of the National Trust.  By now the cold which numbed my fingers was creeping up my arms and I thought perhaps it was time to turn around. A dog, out for a walk with a few canine comrades and their master, put up a couple of Lapwings. I descended a little and saw the Oystercatchers on the rocks below me.  There must have been a couple of hundred, and they looked settled for the night, although more birds were flying in to join them. A duck caught my eye and closer inspection revealed it to be a fish-eating merganser type. She was a female with a brown head and grey flanks splashed with white. The brown of her head and grey of her body seemed to fade into each other, and the white patch beneath her beak was edged diffusely with brown feathers. The crest was thin, and looked like a Mohawk. I managed to take a couple of photos, blurry, distant record shots in the fading light, so I stand to be corrected, but I wrote down Red-Breasted Merganser, less common round here than the very similar, and currently range-expanding Goosander.  It dived frequently, as did the few cormorants which also sat on top of the waves.

Female Red Breasted Merganser

As I walked down the path toward the car park, joined by increasing numbers of dogs and dog walkers, signalling the end of the working day, I made my way back down the head toward the car park, and the welcome opportunity to warm up after a day by the coast.  Twite and Snow bunting less, but nonetheless having enjoyed the opportunity to do a bit of coastal birding and  newfound, and temporary freedom from impending essay deadlines.

Oystercatchers

Bird List for Heysham head, 18^th January 2012: (International Common names/Authors preference)

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos) Red Knot (Caladris canutus) Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) Common Redshank (Tringa totanus) Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris) Northern Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) Greater Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) Oystercatcher (Haematopus haematopus) Common Gull (Larus canus) Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) Black Headed Gull (Croicocephalus ridibundus) Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula) Red Breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) Blackbird (Turdus merula)