Birding Aldcliffe Returns!

 

Regular visitors to Birding Aldcliffe will have doubtless noticed that new posts to the site are somewhat rarer than ivory-billed woodpecker these days. I can only apologise for this; updates were once extremely regular… but that was when I, presumably, had a bit more time on my hands.

When I first started this blog (March 24, 2008) the idea was to highlight the Aldcliffe area as a key birdwatching site in North Lancashire. This was something a few of us already knew of course, and I’d already been birding there for 20 years at that point, but it often frustrated me that there would be days on end, especially during peak periods of potential activity, when no birders were visiting at all. I really wanted to share my passion for the Aldcliffe Marsh / Freeman’s Wood area and hopefully encourage more coverage from local birdwatchers.  

I first visited the area as a young lad in the late 1970s but it wasn’t until I returned to Lancaster after being away at college in the late 80s that I started birdwatching there regularly. At that time, I would venture onto the saltmarshes and wander along the old disused railway line (now the cycle path) with a couple of birding friends, Adrian ‘Ziggy’ Dawson and Greg Potter, both then students at St Martin’s College.

Looking through my old notebooks from that time, it was clear that I was going to my ‘local patch’ as often as I could (interspersed with frequent visits to RSPB Leighton Moss and further afield) and it’s also clear from these tatty old memoirs that there were a lot more birds around than there are today. There were also far fewer people and I would often only see the same handful of local dog walkers and occasional wildfowlers (Morecambe Bay Wildfowl Association own and manage Aldcliffe Marsh) from one visit to the next.

Changes in habitat, infrastructure, grazing regimes and livestock levels have all contrived to change the overall landscape while the notable increase in people, dogs, cycles and such have also impacted on wildlife here in recent decades.

Not all change has been negative - improvements including the creation and management of the Wildfowlers’ Pools along with the much larger Freemans’ Pools (a ‘borrow’ pool that came into being after sea-defence bunds were built to prevent tidal flooding and now managed by Lancashire Wildlife Trust) have been fantastic.

But, we have lost corn bunting (last bred in arable fields in 1990 and swiftly vanished when the fields were turned into a biodiversity vacuum, ie grazing land) and grey partridge is almost certainly extinct in the area now.  Bewick’s swans were once an annual highlight with significant numbers to be expected on the marsh every winter, but sadly no more.   

There have of course also been gains. The expansion in the range of little egrets nationally means this bird is now a common sight all along the River Lune, with great white egrets now following in their footsteps. Little ringed plover are annual summer visitors, as are reed warblers (both relatively recent colonisers). Stock dove and rook were both once scarce on the patch but are now regular year-round.

Despite the seemingly endless stream of dogs, walkers and cyclists that are now a daily feature of the area, there are still birds to be found here. It can still offer great spring birding when scores of migrants pass through in the right conditions. It is still a stronghold for breeding lesser whitethroats, wintering green sandpiper and good numbers of migrating geese with scarcer species such as bean and white-fronted expected most years.

The obvious lack of postings over the last couple of years isn’t necessarily an indication of fewer visits; I still get out there regularly and there are certainly more birdwatchers visiting the site today than when I first started birding there. While I was away in Canada for a few years (where I also had a blog: Brit Birder in BC) Dan Heywood, Steve Wallis et al, kindly kept this blog alive with frequent updates and we certainly get far more records from the Aldcliffe area these days thanks to the increase in coverage.

Moving forward I will endeavour to post at least once a month, covering recent highlights. Hopefully this will inspire more binocular-wielding folk to explore this fabulous area and who knows, you might be the one to discover the next new patch bird!

Coming soon... 2022 Highlights From The Patch.