Ornate gate to the miniature railway at Royden Park 130223
On a beautiful February morning, I headed over the water to the Wirral and Royden Park – which is more of a parkland and woodland than your standard urban park. There’s a walled garden and a miniature railway, and a lake, Roodee Mere. There weren’t many birds around, though. This was my second visit to the park, before I started this blog, and so I have included my photos from the first visit, 1st June 2022.
The sky was as blue as a kingfisher’s wing, without a cloud in sight. The morning was mild and, even though the trees were still bare, it felt like a change had come. Of course, February is a capricious month and by the end of the week we had our first named storm of the season, but for these few hours spring really made an appearance. Sadly, that can’t be said of the birds. I had thought what a bird-free woodland this was on my first visit, and today was no different. Walking through woodland that I would have expected to host parties of tits, siskins, nuthatch, great spotted woodpecker, etc., I was struck by the lack of movement and sound from the trees above.
First, though, I spent a few minutes looking at the Mere, but apart from a moorhen or two, one black-headed gull and a juvenile herring gull it was deserted – but very beautiful with the surrounding trees and bushes reflected strongly on its calm, flat surface.
Roodee Mere, Royden Park 130223
Roodee Mere, Royden Park 010622
I had decided to walk through the woodland up to Thurstaston Hill, and was glad when I emerged from the gloom of the trees into the bright sunshine again, navigating the brick-red sandstone to the top of the hill, where the nearby Dee Estuary on one side and the further out Liverpool Bay wind farm and Liverpool itself were clearly visible. The bright yellow gorse added a welcome splash of colour after the murk of the woodland. As I had a pressing engagement, I was unable to spend too long appreciating the view – or looking for Thor’s Stone.
The Dee Estuary seen from Thurstaston Hill 130223
The Liverpool Bay windfarm seen from Thurstaston Hill 130223
I like a circular walk, so took a different path back towards the car park, through a much more open space of grass and shrubs, with fenced-off fields to one side. One of the few trees held a flock of linnets – the largest number of birds seen. I stopped and enjoyed their constant tinkling chatter for a while, trying to pick out the males – whose breast is not yet the raspberry hue it becomes in the breeding season – and looking for any other species amongst the flock.
A tree full of linnets (honestly!) at Royden Park 130223
Glorious June colours from a similar position 010622
There was only time to spend a few minutes in the walled garden, which was a shame, because it would have been a lovely place to sit and eat my packed lunch: there were drifts of snowdrops, and bird feeders visited by tits, chaffinch, dunnock and robin. There is a debate about providing supplementary feeding for the birds, but these feeders were doing a sterling job of supporting these little birds.
A scattering of snowdrops in the walled garden at Royden Park 130223
Back in the car, when I reached my next destination – Heswall Tesco car park – I saw the ‘best’ bird of the day: a grey wagtail, denizen of urban parks and waterways. A pity it was in such dismal surroundings – and I wonder what that says about how the birds are faring in the urban jungle.
Grey Wagtail 160504W MortimerCat, CC BY-SA 3.0, <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
Species seen: black-headed gull, blue tit, buzzard, Canada geese, chaffinch, coal tit, carrion crow, dunnock, great tit, grey wagtail, jackdaw, linnet, magpie, mallard, moorhen, robin, woodpigeon, wren