Late night openings on a couple of days in the week to see the 10,000+ Pink Footed Geese made Martin Mere a good choice for me to visit coupled by the fact that I could get 3 possible lifers - Barnacle Geese, Bean Geese and Green-Winged Teal. On top of that a single Bewick's Swan arrived within the last few days. On arrival I checked the various hides to see if I could locate any of the 3 or any one else had seen them but no luck. I decided to head off to the Reedbed Walk - away form the hustle and bustle. There were not many birds out there but quite a few Dragonflies which I could not identify, a Peacock Butterfly and some Speckled Wood. The reed beds felt empty without their summer soundtrack - the Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers and Reed Buntings although a sound of the winter made me look up - a flock of 11 Fieldfare chuckling as they flew. This was the reserves first autumn record.
Next stop was the Hale Hide where the sole Bewick's Swan loafed around. They suspected it could have been a bird present a couple of winters ago. Then onto the Ron Barker hide - there were 1000's of Pink footed Geese all over the reserve luckily someone had picked out a Barnacle Goose in them. Quite boldly coloured and distinct from the Pink Feet it was soon lost in them again somewhere. This was considered to be a wild bird and not of the feral breeding birds they have at some places in the North West. Sadly I could not pick out a Bean Goose and the Green Winged Teal was AWOL. It was time for a cup of coffee and a cake (slice of not full)!
Other interesting sightings included Buzzard, Corn Bunting just off the reserve, Kestrel, Ruff, Pintail, Shoveler all all the usual suspects. There was a distinct lack of Shelduck but they were probably in their place of moult. A regular who I have got to know there took cracking photos of a female Merlin sat on a post for 30 minutes on his bridge camera which had a 24x Optical zoom. I had a 60 x zoom but was in the wrong place at the wrong time! I have seen plenty of photographs of Peregrine, Kestrel and Hobby online but less of Merlin. At 5 pm headed back to the Swanlink hide as the geese headed in. The sunset was amazing and after that it looked like the geese stopped coming. Suddenly large numbers began to pour in creating that much famed spectacle.
