Marshside

Waders and Water voles

Alex — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:04:19 GMT

Join us this Sunday for a guided walk around the reserve looking for water voles and waders.

We will be visiting some likely water vole areas, hoping to see them or their obvious signs. We will also be watching for waders and brushing up on wader identification skills.

The walk starts at 11am from the Visitor centre (Sandgrounders hide) and costs £3 for members / £5 for non-members (under 18's free)

Booking is essential, please call The Ribble Discovery Centre on 01253 796292

Step up for Nature

Alex — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:32:02 GMT

Enjoy the spring like weather and join staff and volunteers with a spot of litter picking out on the saltmarsh.

We are running a step up for nature beach cleaning day tomorrow (Thursday 4 April) and we need your help.

The event is running from 11am to 4pm starting from the car park on Marine Drive. It is a drop-in event, you don't need to stay all day, just half an hour would really help!

Tools and training will be provided.

Avocet islands finished just in time

Alex — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:52:00 GMT

Staff and volunteers have been working hard to get the islands in front of the visitor centre (sandgrounders hide) in tip top condition before the start of this years breeding season.

Early on in the winter the islands were strimmed and cleared of last years vegetation. We have now finished them all off with a new fresh layer of cockle shells. The main island directly in front of the centre has also been backbreakingly re-landscaped. we have taken height off the middle of the island and added the material around the outside, adding a couple of splits and bays. By reducing the height of the island we are hoping that the winter flooding each year will now have more chance to drown out any persistent weeds.

Luckily we seem to have finished just in time with the first Avocets arriving back as we were adding the final shells. There are seven Avocets on rainford's lagoon today with more hopefully on their way over the next few weeks. Fingers crossed for a slightly drier summer with less cold and rain at the crucial hatching time for all our waders.

Before (above)

After (below)

Great views and good excuses to buy new binoculars

Alex — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:42:02 GMT

There were great views of the great white egret in front of the visitor centre (Sandgrounders hide) over the weekend.

Today the lapwings, golden plover and black-tailed godwits were showing well in good numbers instead.

Don't forget if you need to update your binoculors or just want to try out the latest RSPB stock, head to the visitor centre (sandgrounders hide) tomorrow where Julie from the Ribble Discovery Centre will be on hand to help you find the right optics for you.

We also have a few spaces left on the big tide walk tomorrow if you need an excuse to try out your new optics purchase. Todays walk at Hesketh out marsh proved worth the cold and windy walk with awsome views of barn owl, buzzard, kestrel, merlin, and hundreds of oystercatcher, lapwings and golden plover.

Road closure, advance warning

Alex — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:02:00 GMT

Please be aware that due to a 10k charity race in Southport on Sunday 10 February a number of roads will be closed around the reserve.

Marshside Road, Hesketh Road and Marine Drive will all be closed from 7.30am to 1pm.

THE RESERVE WILL BE OPEN AS USUAL; there will be access to the car park and reserve via Marine Drive from the north only (Plough roundabout at Crossens).

Merseyside police officers will be controlling the road closure on Marine Drive at the Plough roundabout.

Please inform them that you are visiting the RSPB reserve and going no further than the car park.

Full details of roads closed;

Marshside Road from Marine Drive to junction with Fleetwood Road,

Marine Drive from the Plough roundabout to Weld Road roundabout,

Hesketh Road from junction with Fleetwood Road to Marine Drive

Fairway from Promenade to Marine Drive.

Alternative Air Shows at Marshside

Alex — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:28:00 GMT

Click here to find out more about our Air Show with a difference.

Knots fear not

Tony Baker — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:49:00 GMT

The big ‘spring’ tides of the autumn blow in again soon (seasons can get confusing can't they!) and the birds are even more mobile than usual.

On the September spring tides our Marshside guided walk participants enjoyed some great close-up views of knots and dunlins out on the estuary. I wonder if the bird in the photo was just too tired to fly away after its incredible journey from perhaps as far away as Greenland? Or is it because these birds don’t see humans as a threat - perhaps they have never seen one before? Either way it makes for great views and a photographer’s dream!

Our Hesketh Out Marsh guided-walkers were lucky to see a young spoonbill circling them for some time. The young marsh harriers have also been popping up everywhere but especially at Hesketh where there have been 3 together recently. There are at least 40 little egrets about and they have been joined by a great white egret recently.

The bright sunny spells are still tempting migrant hawker dragonflies and small tortoiseshells and red admirals to fly too. Perhaps it is still not too late for an ‘Indian summer’?

Why not join one of our big tide walks coming up on the 16th and 17th October?

Superb sparrowhawk

Alex — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:14:00 GMT

Here are a few photos taken yesterday of this very obliging juvenile sparrowhawk. The photos were taken from the Visitor Centre (Sandgrounders hide) where it spent most of the morning, either feeding on a previous kill or resting to let it's food go down with a good preen as well.

Blue winged teal photos as promised

Alex — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 16:03:22 GMT

As promised here are a couple of photos taken by local birder Neill Hunt who spotted the bird first. Thanks Neill.

Marshside first?

Alex — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 14:29:27 GMT

It was certainly a first for me! Blue winged teal at Junction pool screen today at midday doing exactly what it says in the book; associating with shovelers. Consensus from the birding crowd was that it was an adult female. According to BTO the last record of these American birds turning up in the area was in 1992. Photo hopefully to follow shortly.

Mainly large numbers of Black-tailed godwits on Suttons marsh with a few wigeon, teal, lapwing and pink-footed geese showing on today's WeBS count (wetland bird survey). A nice merlin added to the views by putting all the godwits up. Apparently it was raining snipe over on Rimmers marsh with 200 plus counted.

Everyday changes

Tony Baker — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:25:07 GMT

I just paused on the coast road to look across the vastness of the estuary in the hope of either the short-eared owl seen last week or one of the marsh harriers (a male is around as well as a few juveniles). Quite sensibly, raptors were not bothering to fly in what was turning into quite a gale. What I did see was quite as marvellous – a flock of 110 swallows tightly bunched and swooping low over the sea aster. They seemed to be feeding but passed onwards out towards the sand dunes looking more and more like a shoal of fish as they went, with the gusting wind as their water.
Yesterday I surveyed the Marshside ditches and felt guilty as I flushed the 1600 pink-footed geese that were feeding by the housing estate. I feel even worse today as they have not returned! The numbers have built-up quickly this week from just 50 or so last week and I am sure that they will be back. Some of the godwits and snipe seem to have moved on though. There were over 2000 godwits and many 100’s, (perhaps as many as 1000), snipe on the reserve at the start of the month but snipe are back to more normal levels now. Where are they all now?
A couple of spoonbills at Banks Marsh have not visited Marshside but one of them was here a couple of weeks ago so I think I can post the photo by volunteer Alan Farrell here. Other sightings this week: an osprey on the 11th (John Dempsey), water rail and kingfisher at Marshside, greenshanks and spotted redshank at Hesketh Out Marsh, brown hawker, common darter and migrant hawker dragonflies, red admiral, speckled wood and small tortoiseshells (heading for sheds now I think!).
The constant soaking has made it a wonderful year for brackish water crowfoot, one of Marshside’s special plants (you can also see spiked water milfoil in the picture).

MEP visits world class wildlife site

Tony Baker — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:57:19 GMT

Jacqueline Foster MEP has been to visit one of Europe’s most important sites for wildlife.

On Friday 20th July, the MEP for North West England, experienced the wealth of bird life currently residing at RSPB’s Marshside reserve, near Southport on the Ribble Estuary.

Protected under European Union law, RSPB Marshside is vital as a stopover for thousands of migratory water birds making their way south to sunnier climes for the winter months. Arriving from as far away as North America, the birds come to Marshside and the wider Ribble Estuary to feast on the calorie-rich insects and invertebrates that live there.

Many more birds stop and spend the winter on the Estuary to escape the harsh arctic winter.

RSPB Marshside is part of the Ribble Coast and Wetlands Regional Park, a landscape-scale partnership project that aims to enhance the Ribble Estuary for wildlife and for people through an ongoing programme of nature conservation and sustainable tourism projects.

The RSPB’s contribution to the Ribble Coast and Wetlands Regional Park forms part of its national Futurescapes initiative, a series of landscape-scale partnership projects, part funded by the EU Life+ programme.

Tony Baker, the RSPB’s site manager for its Ribble reserves, said: “Marshside forms part of a network of amazing nature sites around the Ribble. We are working with a range of partners to enhance, expand and link up these special places to make the Ribble an even better place for wildlife, as well as for local people and visitors. It is thanks, in part, to the special protection afforded to the Ribble under EU law that we are able to carry out this important conservation project.”

Member of the European Parliament meets European wildlife

Tony Baker — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:37:26 GMT

Member of the European Parliament meets European wildlife
The sand-winning works that used to dominate the Southport seafront near Marshside has long since vanished, but on Tuesday 7th August Brian Simpson MEP was delighted to see that shovelers were still around at Marshside.
Brian and his wife had come to visit RSPB’s Marshside reserve where shoveler ducks, a summer visitor to the UK that overwinters in southern Europe and Africa, were basking in some long-awaited sunshine. Alongside the shovelers were a host of other waterbirds and waders, including black-tailed godwits, mute swans, greylag geese, lapwings, coots, reed warblers, black-headed gulls and a ruff.
Marshside is such an important site for these and other wild birds that it is protected under the EU’s Birds Directive, and is part of the EU-wide Natura 2000 network of sites protected for the wildlife they are home to.
“I am delighted to find such a wonderful place for wildlife right on my doorstep. The RSPB’s success in transforming the Marshside site into a wetland teeming with wildlife is a great achievement. It is vital that we protect the wildlife we have, and take every opportunity to bring wildlife back to our countryside. We owe it to future generations to leave the planet in no worse a state than we inherited it. I wish RSPB every success in its work at Marshside, and look forwards to visiting other RSPB reserves in my Constituency.”
Brian ended his visit signing a pledge in support of legal protection for our natural heritage. “I am very pleased to be able to demonstrate my support for nature conservation and the environment that we all depend on.”

Spring tides hit the Ribble

Alex — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:14:12 GMT

Visitors are invited to the RSPB’s Marshside and Hesketh Out Marsh nature reserves to witness the high “spring” tides and the spectacular wildlife spectacle they bring to the Ribble estuary.

Spring tides actually occur every month but are particularly large in both spring and autumn. An increase in the moon’s gravitational pull takes the tide both further in and further out, completely flooding the saltmarshes and mudflats.

The Ribble estuary is internationally important for the vast numbers of geese, ducks and wading birds that rely on its marshes for food during the winter months.

Up to a quarter of a million birds may be present on the estuary on a good day and the colossal spring tides bring them to feed much more closely inshore than normal. This means they are much more visible to people visiting Marshside and Hesketh Out Marsh. The spring tide also flushes out many kinds of other wildlife that live on the saltmarshes, attracting birds of prey such as hen harriers, marsh harriers and short-eared owls.

The RSPB are running five days of Big Tide Birding guided walk events from March to May at Marshside and Hesketh Out Marsh, where visitors will be able to get close to the action as the tide comes in.

“The sights and sounds of huge flocks of birds and the dramatic display of predators doing what they do best, make these spring tides an experience to remember," says Warden Alex Pigott.

The first event is on Saturday 10 March at Hesketh Out Marsh and runs from 10.30am until 1.30pm. Tickets cost £5, £3 for RSPB members and half price for under 18s. Advanced booking is essential. For tickets, please all the Ribble Discovery Centre on 01253 796292.

Here are details of the other events on the Big Tide Birding season:

RSPB Hesketh Out Marsh

Sunday 8 April - 10:30-13:30

Sunday 6 May - 09:30-12:30

RSPB Marshside

Saturday 7 April - 10:00 - 12:30

Monday 7 May - 10:30 - 13:00

For more information and to book please call the Ribble Discovery Centre on 01253 796292.

Avocets are back!

Alex — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:40:03 GMT

Two Avocets arrived back at the reserve today. They were first seen in front of Sandgrounders hide on Suttons Marsh this morning but have since moved over to Rimmers Marsh and can be seen from Nels hide or the half way screen.