South Walney winter birding

Channel in the salt marsh before high tide

Approaching mid-night on Wednesday 3rd December,  an earth tremor shook the bedroom.  Magnitude 3.3, epicentre Silverdale where it felt ‘like a car crashing into the house.’  Waterfowl of Leighton Moss wetlands would have sensed its coming.  Birds pick up P waves (primary sound waves), humans are aware only of S waves (secondary waves.)  At 11.23 pm it's unlikely that anyone was out in the reed-beds to note the effect of an earth tremor on roosting birds.
Today, en route for South Walney my friend asks if I felt it. Yes, and something disorientated my dreams too.  Cattle and fox cubs in an English landscape  but a tiger and cub!!!  The earth moved and I conjured a dream-tiger, seeing  through a camera lens.  Sleeping and waking, I’m Nature Writer and photographer.  
​Flooded fields and rivers brim-full.  Dark winter trees silhouetted against the low sun.  A lingering mist in saturated air.  Storm Bram is forecast for tomorrow, rain and strong winds.  So today suggests  a moment of respite.  Arriving  well before high-tide, we hope  to see flocks of birds driven closer to the shore as they feed. 
From Coastguard Cottages there are distant birds on the water between slivers of salt-marsh.  A glimmering sunlight floods over the channel -catching the brilliant white of an egret in flight that comes down on the shoreline, black bill and legs,   long  yellow feet to stir the water for crustaceans.  Long neck plumes will herald the breeding season.  Litte Egret, Egretta garzetta. 
Hard to gauge how high tide will act upon the birds of the day- where they’ll be.  Birds feed as an incoming tide stirs up nutrients and they move before it.   Timing and precise location are tricky. 

A couple of seals show by the old pier.   Late in January, from Peggy Braithwaite hide, we watched an incoming tide push feeding birds before it- toward us.   The scene was lively with flocks taking to the air as  waves broke about them..  High tide is at 1.30 pm but much of the  salt marsh is already inundated.  There is one sliver of grass where Brent geese graze, beside Oystercatcher.
The low sun dazzles as we head toward the sea through sand dunes spiked with marram grass and pocked with rabbit holes.  Tigers in my dreams and vanishing like Alice down a rabbit hole, it's surreal. 
Is it sounds of the sea, the soft and evocative winter light that distinguishes the day- or the tally of birds?
We see lIttle egret, turnstone, brent geese, oystercatcher,  a female goosander, teal, a  flock of redshank,  Canada geese,  lapwing,  half a dozen curlew in flight. Mystery birds on slivers of land.  And small birds in silhouette in brambles.

A flock of redshank  roosts on a grassy shoal in a freshwater pool, heads  tucked deep into  breast plumage.   Numbers can increase dramatically in winter with the arrival of birds from Iceland.  A few teal swim close to the grassy shoal and some  roost amongst the redshank.
Small birds are twittering in bramble bushes along our return route to Coastguard Cottages.  The light is tricky and detail is hard to see. 

Looking into the sun, it's hard to make out birds roosting on another fresh-water pool.   There are larger birds amongst them with spangled plumage on the mantle.   I hear and see lapwing.
Thanks to naturalist Jeff Holmes for confirming these large waders are ' grey plover in full winter plumage.  They're attractive birds and their dark under-wing, distinctive in flight, distinguishes them from the white 'armpits' of golden plover. '
Grey plover breed in the Arctic  and are most common in the UK  from late summer to spring when they're found in coastal habitat and salt marsh.  In winter, the back shows a smoky grey chequered pattern, the belly is whitish and long legs are dark grey to black.  Grey plover, Pluvialis squatarola -   the bird is associated with the coming of rain.  Good to see them, now I'd like better images.
The small bird in the bramble is reed bunting-  a pale throat with dark stripe visible'.
As we drive off South Walney some half a dozen curlew fly overhead.

As a nature writer, I love to visit South Walney National Nature Reserve.  It's an important overwintering location for thousands of wildfowl and waders so I look -up what I've found on previous visits in winter.   And I check recent sightings at the Walney Observatory.  When Great Northern Diver and Hen Harrier are mentioned it's easy to be lured into wishing them into an appearance.   I tell myself it's important to keep an open mind when Climate Change affects  migratory pattern and may bring in unfamiliar species. 
Years ago,  at Kenfig sand dunes in South Wales, I was on a field-trip with Bristol Ornithological Club. It was winter and there was ice. We found a golden plover, frozen but preserved by ice and the plumage of its mantle still looked beautiful.  The chequered mantle patterning of Grey plover made me think plover but, without more detail, I was uncertain.