Home thoughts

It's an odd thing: I haven't seen a single sparrow in the garden this weekend. I'd let the feeders lie empty for a couple of days at the end of last week but it usually takes less than a day for them to twig they've been refilled. 

They haven't been much in evidence in their other usual haunts locally, either. They've been very quiet at the station this week and the usual mutterings in the privets by the bus stop weren't to be heard. I was rather relieved when one chirped at me from a privet hedge as I walked home at sunset. 

A few minutes later I walked on down to the station thinking it was a bit of a cool evening for bats but it's worth five minutes' having a look. There were two soprano pipistrelles flying round the field at head height. One flew off towards the school, the other continued flying figures of eight around my head. I stood there for five minutes and bade it good luck and goodnight. It's a rum do when you're seeing more bats than spadgers.

Friday toddle

Juvenile moorhens, Brabyns Park

I was evidently tired after the past couple of days and a serious case of oversleeping knocked the day's plans for a trip out to Bempton on the head. A bright sunny day clouded over so I headed off to Etherow Country Park to have a look at the mandarin ducks.

Moorhen

I got the train out to Marple rather than drag the afternoon out with two bus rides. From the station I walked down the road and turned into Brabyns Park. A heron on the pond spotted me before I spotted me and it was off sharpish. Unlike a family of moorhens — the two adults and three full-grown juveniles — that emerged out of hiding and started pottering about the water lilies.

Brabyns Park 

I walked through Brabyns Park up into Compstall, a gentler suite of inclines than Compstall Road and a lot more picturesque. The mixed tit flocks in the woodland were accompanied by very vocal nuthatches and robins sang every hundred yards. Crows and jackdaws called from the parkland and ring-necked parakeets screeched their way around the mature oak trees. 

The last time I walked this way the iron bridge over the Etherow was closed for repairs so I ended up walking up Compstall Road anyway. I crossed it today and walked up Rollins Lane, passing the community woodland with its magpies, titmice, chiffchaffs and robins.

Canada x greylag hybrid goose

Crossing the road I walked up to the car park at Etherow Country Park. This end of the lake was a mass of Canada geese, pigeons and jackdaws with a few mallards and mute swans fitting in as best can and a tufted duck looking lonely on its own. A ghostly edition of a Canada goose — the product of a furtive pairing with one of the greylags stationed on the island — drifted over and hauled itself up onto the side, standing out in the crowd.

Tufted duck

I walked down the path alongside the canal. There were plenty of mallards, Canada geese and coots about and moorhens, pigeons and dunnocks fossicked about along the banks. A blue tit flying across the path and disappearing into the bushes was followed by a parade of long-tailed tits. I walked down to the weir without seeing any mandarin ducks. Nor were they on the river.

They'd all gone to bed early. There were whistles from the depths of the trees upstream of the weird and a dozen were asleep in the drowned willows at the top of the canal by Weir Cottage.

The mandarins had gone to bed

Keg Wood 

I had a quick look at Keg Wood, the knees suggesting that we might not enjoy a long walk. Titmice bounced noisily through the trees and a squadron of Canada geese passed by at treetop height.

Etherow Country Park 

The walk back down was fairly quiet. The jackdaws were flying in to roost in the trees by the courtyard and more Canada geese were flying in from parts unknown. I'd looked in vain for grey wagtails on the river, one flew over the bus stop as I waited for the 384 to Stockport and the bus home.

Holyhead

Shag diving for dinner

I had an embarrassment of complimentary travel vouchers burning a hole in my pocket so I used half of them for a day out to Anglesey. It's a lot late for the nesting seabirds at South Stack so I decided I'd have a proper explore of Holyhead Harbour and the breakwater.

Newton-le-Willows was a new addition to my list of railway stations what have a buzzard sitting in a tree, a chunky, earth-brown bird that glared at the train as it left the station. It was a day for seeing buzzards, there were a few more in the Cheshire countryside and yet more flying low over the fields of Anglesey.

It was a lovely day for a train ride along the North Wales coastline. The tide was high, there was just enough mud left for a few shelducks and a big flock of black-headed gulls on the coast just North of Mostyn, beyond that the waves lapped seawalls. Little egrets and herons haunted salt marshes, carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks rummaged in fields, herring gulls and woodpigeons sat on chimney pots and starlings on wireless antennae. Mute swans and little egrets peppered the big island on the marine lake at Rhyl, a crowd of little egrets clustered by the viaduct over the Clwyd.

Crossing over onto Anglesey the flocks of rooks became more frequent as the train passed through sheep farming country. A big flock of greylags grazed near Llyn Coron just after Bodorgan Station, there was a bigger one near Rhosneigr Station.

The Old Harbour 

I got off the train and wandered over the Old Harbour into Holyhead. I stopped for a look round, as well as the inevitable herring gulls and pigeons there were a couple of shags and a sleeping guillemot. Black guillemots frequent the harbour and I got my hopes up but this bird had all dark upperparts so was definitely a common guillemot. (In Summer, black guillemots are black top and bottom with big white patches on their wings, in Winter they're nearly all white with flecks of black on their backs and a broken black margin to those white wing patches.)

Instead of my usual walk across the town centre and out for South Stack I walked beside the harbour along Victoria Road. At the top of the road there's a gap by the houses looking over an inlet of the New Harbour. Herring gulls and oystercatchers dozed on rocks, a heron was asleep on an island and a couple more shags were out fishing in the water.

Rock pipit

I carried on round the road and dropped down to the promenade next to the Maritime Museum. The sea was lapping at the seawall and a rock pipit was skittering over the rocks by the seawall. One of the shags was fishing close enough to try and get its photo. Unlike the only black guillemot of the day which was out in midwater by the boats. It was in Winter whites, the first time I've seen this plumage, and at first I took it for one of the little buoys marking the harbour pathways. Then I realised what it was then convinced myself I was right first time and was only sure about it when it dived underwater and bobbed back up again fifty yards further out.

Shag 

Holyhead Mountain from the marina 

A nosy round the marina found a lot more herring gulls and a few black-headed gulls and carrion crows, and redshanks and oystercatchers dozed in pairs on the rocks. A way over I could see people walking the length of the breakwater (it's about a mile and a half long). I reckoned I could try a bit of seawatching on there so I took the path to Breakwater Road.

Along the way I took a detour. A rough path led into some woodland so I followed it, adding chiffchaffs and titmice to the day's tally. Then I got to a bit where the path had collapsed down a bank. I'd have crossed the gap in younger, dafter days but I decided not to risk it on untrustworthy knees and turned back. Along the way I spent a while trying to get a photo of an ichneumon wasp that was hunting on a bit of stone wall.

Ichneumon wasp 

The path had evidently been a private road to the castellated Victorian ruin on Breakwater Road. Parts ran along high banks thick with ivy, hart's tongue ferns and polypody. Elsewhere there were high walls thick with ivy and fizzing with insects. Commas, red admirals and speckled woods feasted on the ivy flowers, bees and hoverflies buzzed, Southern hawkers snatched small flies out of the air in passing. It felt very much like Summer.

Red admiral 

Comma

Goldfinches, great tits and robins flitted to and fro between the trees on either side of the road.

Goldfinches
When they sit still it isn't easy to pick out goldfinches from dead leaves but as they never sit still the problem doesn't arise.

A picturesque ruin

The breakwater, the New Harbour on the right, the Irish Sea on the left 

I had hoped that when I got onto the breakwater I'd get a closer look at the black guillemot and perhaps find some more but no luck in either case. In fact nearly all the birds were more distant than they had been from the marina. The seawatching was the typical combination of optimism, patience and frustration tempered by a couple of moments of triumph. Nearly all the birds I could see were gulls, mostly herring gulls with a few black-headed gulls and a couple of passing great black-backs. Just as my spirits were flagging a juvenile gannet flew by one of the great black-backs. Crows had been flying across the harbour. One flying over the sea took my eye as it looked a lot broad-winged, even more so than a rook, but I concluded it was just a trick of the angle I was seeing it by. Then it called a few times and headed off up and over to Holyhead Mountain and I added chough to the year list. How I missed a dirty long red bill I do not know.

Snowdonia from the end of thf breakwater

The New Harbour

Wheatear 

A rock pipit jumped over the seawall on my approach. A wheatear kept its nerve but also kept its distance. It was a young bird in fresh plumage and the white tips of the tail puzzled me until I worked that out.

Wheatear

I walked the length of the breakwater and walked back. An adult gannet passed by on the open sea about a quarter of a mile out. Glancing down at the path I realised that despite the island being made up of Pre-Cambrian gneisses that had been folded and compressed and partially melted under high pressure the breakwater has been dressed in fossiliferous Carboniferous limestone.

Rugose corals, possibly Lithiostrotion

The walk back to the station was uneventful except the bit where I was forcibly reminded that the roads on this end of town have some steep stretches both up and back down into the town centre. I was glad of a sit down when I got to the station.

There were yet more corvids, greylags, buzzards and woodpigeons as the stopping train to Shrewsbury made its way across Anglesey. Mute swans cruised on the Cefni at Malltraeth while a kestrel hunted along the bank. The tide had ebbed and beyond Llanfairfechan the gulls on the beach were joined by little egrets and pied wagtails.

Great Orme from the train

I changed at Llandudno Junction where a couple of dozen house sparrows settling to roost in a bush by the pedestrian bridge contrived to sound like a couple of hundred. As the train back to Manchester trundled through the twilight I was the old man with his nose pressed against the window looking for owls.

Horwich

Green woodpecker, Rivington Pike Cottage

I spent yesterday sorting out and finally receiving the delivery I'd waited all day for, which was extremely frustrating as it was a lovely Autumn day. I went out to Wellacre Country Park at teatime to get a bit of exercise and try to wind down a bit but the mood wasn't conducive to birdwatching so I limited myself to walking down from Flixton Station, saying hello to the mallard and coot on Dutton's Pond, then having a nodding acquaintance with a mixed tit flock including a nuthatch in Wellacre Wood while trying and failing to see a passing skein of pink-feet through the leaf canopy.

Georges Road 

It was another nice day today, I decided I'd do better. I've done hardly any hillwalking this year and haven't touched the Horwich moors so I got a 125 from Bolton Bus Station, got off at Georges Road and headed up the hill. The first half mile was hard work but the joints loosened up a lot and it was a good walk.

Jay

Robins sang in the hedgerows, carrion crows and magpies rummaged about in the fields by the road and jays with crops full of acorns commuted between Wilderswood and the fields, accounting for the proliferation of oak saplings in the fields not grazed by sheep or horses.

Looking up to Winter Hill 

It had become one of those days when whatever you wore it would be wrong. When the sun was out I was dressed too warm, when a cloud rolled over or the road passed onto shadow the sharp edge of the breeze asserted itself. It was warm enough for butterflies, large whites and red admirals fluttered about the wayside and a surprisingly late meadow brown played peek-a-boo in the rank grass between bilberry bushes.

Stonechat not cooperating with the cameraman

I got myself a cup of tea at Rivington Pike Cottage, saying hello to many friendly dogs in the process. It had been a nice walk up and the joints had loosened up considerably so I deserved a few minutes sat down contemplating a rather pleasant landscape. A robin sang by the café and I could hear the ticking of stonechats but couldn't see them. A few linnets were more accommodating. I finished my drink and walked up the road. I hadn't gone far when the stonechats started showing themselves, flitting up from the field to strike poses on fenceposts before zipping back down into cover. A few more linnets emerged from the heather, meadow pipits bobbed up and sat on the fence before flying over the road and disappearing into the moors.

Then I had a shock. A flash of vivid green caught my eye and a green woodpecker flew up and perched on the fence. For the first time in my life a green woodpecker sat still long enough for me to get its photo. It lurched back down again to rummage amongst the rocks and heather by the hidden stream. Knowing it was there and seeing it were three different things.

A few years back I stared in this field and was completely unable to find a wryneck. I feel a bit better about it after today. The green woodpecker in this picture is twice the size of a wryneck, is bright green and has a pillar box red cap.

Carrion crow 

Stonechats fly-catched from wire fences, mipits flew hither and thither, crows and magpies strutted about in the fields. I wandered over the county boundary to check out the plantation above the cottage, for once it was quietly deserted, sometimes there are titmice and I harboured an unlikely hope that some of the crossbills or siskins that have been passing over on migration might have stopped for a rest.

Stonechat cooperating with the cameraman 

Rivington Pike 

A kestrel hunted over the moor below the pike. I decided not to walk on over to Rivington, choosing instead to turn back and toss a coin between walking up Winter Hill and over to Burnt Edge and Walker Fold or down through Wilderswood into Horwich. Wilderswood won. As I walked down past the café a raven cronked by and drifted down the hill. There was a small passage of swallows, twos and threes heading roughly southwards, the more roughly when they skimmed over the heather and were chased off by mipits.

Wilderswood 

The depths of the wood were mostly quiet, occasional great tits or chiffchaffs calling from the canopy. The rides and the clearings where the larch trees were felled a couple of years ago were livelier, wrens and blackbirds fossicking about in the heath and bracken, robins, titmice and chiffchaffs in the trees and bushes. Woodpigeons and magpies clattered about and jay's passed to and fro.

Wilderswood 

I meandered my way round and down to Brownlow Road where long-tailed tits and coal tits bounced through the trees. The most wearisome part of the afternoon's walk was the meander down the steep streets of the housing estate into Horwich for the bus back to Bolton.

Martin Mere

Pink-footed geese
It's that time of year again.

It was a nice day so I got the train to Burscough Bridge and walked over to Martin Mere. And the trains behaved themselves all day.

By Red Cat Lane 

Walking down Red Cat Lane the woodpigeons, rooks and jackdaws were around but didn't really look to be settling on the fields though there seemed to be more going on over by Crabtree Lane. A carrion crow had been harassing a buzzard soaring over the station, half a dozen jackdaws were doing similar to another buzzard that was drifting over to Rufford.

Pink-footed geese

.The first of the day's many pink-footed geese flew over as I left town and a couple of hundred of them clamoured a couple of fields to the North. 

Pennines from Red Cat Lane 

It was a cool, almost cloudless, morning that definitely felt like Autumn, even without the background calls of rooks and geese and robins singing in hedgerows. The lack of any swallows or house martins was to be expected. So it was a nice surprise to see a couple of yellow wagtails — an adult and a juvenile — flying around the farm buildings on the corner of Curlew Lane.

Martin Mere 

Arriving at Martin Mere I sat myself down at the Discovery Hide. The mere was busy: crowds of mallards, greylags and lapwings clustered on every island. There weren't many black-headed gulls but what they lacked in numbers they made up in noise. All the small figures hustling about between ducks and geese were starlings. There were plenty of teal around once I got my eye in but I had no luck finding any shovelers or shelducks. There was a crowd of Canada geese over on the far bank and a few pochards were cruising about, the drakes almost out of eclipse plumage.

Way over, on the Plover Field, there were at least hundreds of pink-feet with more flying in. A female marsh harrier drifted over the fields beyond. One buzzard sat on a fencepost, another circled high overhead.

Lapwings 

A glossy ibis has been on this field a few days, showing well but distant. I reckoned if I was going to look for it I'd need to be over in the United Utilities Hide where you get a grandstand view of the field. 

I headed for the United Utilities Hide. First stop was a look over the mere from the screens, plenty more lapwings and mallards and a snipe preening on one of the islands.

Speckled woods, large whites and red admirals fluttered about in the sunshine, it was becoming a warm day. That might have been what prompted one of the chiffchaffs to start singing. Toddling down the path I was met by a stoat which looked at me, decided it wasn't keen and shot off into the undergrowth.

Chaffinch 

A quick nosy at the Janet Kear Hide gave me some nice views of chaffinches as they preened in the bushes. The feeders were fitfully busy with blue tits and great tits, neither of them seeming keen to break cover for long.

The view from the United Utilities Hide was odd. To the right, the field by the mere was deserted, not even a carrion crow or woodpigeon. To the left, on the Plover Field there was upwards of a thousand geese, most of them pink-feet. The Canada geese and greylags loafed over on the far side of the field. I scanned the field to see what else was about, mindful that other geese get carried along with the flocks of pink-feet and I'll need to get into practice for the end of year wild goose chases. The white object was a farmyard greylag.

The black objects a couple of fields away were carrion crows but there was something odd about the one sitting on a fencepost behind them. It would have been about the right size for a crow but was very upright. Then it stretched its neck out and could only have been the ibis. Even then it could have been an hallucination had it not decided to fly down into the field. The long, dropping neck and limply-hanging legs were definitely the ibis.

The reedbed walk 

A wander round the reedbeds was a mixed bag. Dragonflies — Southern hawkers, migrant hawkers and common darters — were everywhere. Geese flew over noisily in overlapping circular waves like the cutaways in a Busby Berkeley musical. The pool at the Rees Hide was bone dry and overgrown, no chance of any waders. And no birds on the ground at all, not even any finches or buntings on the ripening seedheads. Three or four fields away a flock of at least twenty cattle egrets accompanied the herd of grazing longhorn cattle.

At the Gordon Taylor Hide 

There was water on the pool at the Gordon Taylor Hide but no exposed mud. A group of teal lurked in a corner of the pool away from a heron intent on catching dragonflies with about a one in three times success rate, the loud clatter of its closing beak marking the times when it missed. A group of mallard did that thing where they cluster together and keep a close eye on the heron with a clear patch of water between them. (This is also quite a good way of finding where to look if you can hear a bittern close by in a reedbed.) A Cetti's warbler sang in the brambles by the heron and I couldn't find a single clue as to where it was, not so much as a bouncing twig even though it was shifting locations within the bramble patch.

Walking back the only swallow of the day shot across one of the fields. There were more Canada geese, lapwings and teal on the pool by the Harrier Hide and just the one dabchick bobbing up and down as it fed mid-water.

The Harrier Hide 

I decided to get the train back from New Lane. The path by the reserve fence was reassuringly muddy in patches, I'll be happy if it stays that way and doesn't become a Winter quagmire. Gatekeepers and speckled woods chased through the woodland edges and a swarm of common darters sunned themselves on the tops of the high fenceposts.

The walk down Marsh Moss Road would have been quiet but for distant pink-feet. Woodpigeons and magpies clattered about in the trees. Collared doves, robins and a goldfinch sang in the gardens by the station.

Marsh Moss Road 

The journey back was quiet and uneventful and the trains did what they were supposed to do. The black-headed gulls that weren't at Martin Mere carpeted the flooded fields of West Lancashire.

Just another lazy Sunday

Robin

Last night I'd hit a creative writing streak that I didn't want to break and ended up not going to bed until half-five so despite its being a sunny day after a phenomenally wet night I didn't much feel like going out and about. Having no public transport available today limited the options quite a lot, anyway. 

I spent a while fidgeting about again, watching the squirrel evict the spadgers from the sunflower feeder, then the spadgers ganging up on the squirrel until it got fed up and moved on, the spadgers descending on the feeders, the coal tits barging the spadgers out of the way and the blue tits and great tits chasing the coal tits off and the spadgers evicting them. It's an odd sort of pecking order but it seems to work to everyone's advantage in the end. The long-tailed tits descended on the fat ball feeders — they prefer for the magpies to have had a go at them first because it makes for a more crumbly surface.

Juvenile house sparrow

The road seems to have been settled as the border to the robins' Winter territories, "my" robin singing in the back garden and sometimes coming into the front to sing from the rose bushes, the school's robin favouring the elderberry bushes by the school fence.

Lostock Park 

I had another wander round the park which was predictably busy with people and equally predictably quiet of birds though at least there was a goldfinch squeaking in the bushes by the bowling green this time. The robins were very vocal though the territories they seemed to be defending were tiny, about the size of my back garden.

Leaf gall mite on lime leaves

The search for bats at sunset proved fruitless, there was a decided nip in the air. The station robin wasn't shy of answering back to the songs of "my" robin and the school robin. "My" robin's territory seems to include the field and the couple of houses on the edge of the field, the steamroller's garden is a definite flash point, at least two of the robins laying claim to it.