House martins flying around Liverpool Sailing Club 22072022
This morning, the hedgerows around Speke-Garston Coastal Reserve are bouncing with life, with adult goldfinches being chased by and feeding hungry pale-faced fledglings, and whitethroats skulking amidst blackberry thorns, muttering their scratchy call. I head towards the shore initially – the first homeward-bound whinchat of the ‘autumn’ (it’s still only July!) was reported yesterday and I am hoping it has lingered overnight.
There are house martins swirling around the angled roof of Liverpool Sailing Club where, in a month or so, they will gather to start the return journey to Africa, leaving our shores for another year, and leaving us somehow diminished without them.
I continue on down to the slipway. A reed warbler flies from reed top to reed top, beak full of insects, before disappearing into the heart of the reedbed. I hear it murmuring to its nestlings as four swallows fly overhead, twittering softly. They are followed by another small flock of goldfinches – a species which is doing extremely well on the reserve, with its large areas of scrubland supporting thistles and teasels and other favoured finch food.
Reedbeds on the shore 22072022
The river is as smooth as a millpond today; it’s icy blueness serene and calm, creating the same sense of stillness inside me. I linger for a few moments, watching the recently returned black-headed gulls foraging on the shore before the tide comes fully in; a curlew calls, then takes to the air, long beak and white rump apparent as it glides past low to the sand in search of a better place to feed.
The airport gantry 27072022
I climb the steps by the sailing club and follow the footpath towards the airport’s old runway and gantry, passing yet more goldfinches. Two sparrowhawks are circling over the field where the skylarks nest; they come together in the sky for a moment, one apparently chasing the other, and I wonder if they are adult and juvenile – the young one learning from, or just harassing, the older. Their pale, barred, broad-winged shape is always a delight to see and I wish them well on their hunting trip, wondering as I do if they are from the woodland family that has now almost abandoned its nest site.
It’s warming up now and I have somewhere else to be so, reluctantly but with a feeling of fulfilment and a deep sense of gratitude to this place, I turn for home.