Cutacre

Wigeon and gadwall

It was a day of surprises, starting with my popping round to check up on my dad and seeing a squirrel running down the street carrying a cooked sausage in its mouth.

It was also another very grey day though I won't grumble about it, judging by the weather forecast I'll be wishing for another one next week.

Next came an unexpectedly productive visit to my local patch, followed shortly by my watching a male stonechat perched on a wire fence hunting insects on the grass verge as the bus sat at the traffic light outside the Trafford Centre bus station.

I played bus station bingo, the 132 was first out of the hat so I headed for Cutacre.

When I've visited Cutacre in the past I've got off the bus at Tyldesley Town Hall and walked up Cumbermere Road to the railway and over the bridge into Cutacre. Crossing the roads to get to Cumbermere Road is a pain (potentially a literal one as there's a blind spot for the drivers at the crossing point) so today I got off a couple of stops earlier, crossed Manchester Road at the lights and walked up Cleworth Hall Lane, which turned out to be a lot easier and a nicer walk.

Cleworth Hall Lane 

Just past Cleworth Hall there's a gate and the lane becomes a farm track. Robins, wrens and house sparrows bustled about in the hedgerows, goldfinches twittered in the trees,  linnets twittered between fields and a mixed tit flock bounced through a stand of hawthorns. The fields were busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons and magpies with more of them flying overhead. Jays screeched about the young oak trees, stopping once in a while to give me the evil eye as I passed. A little egret flying overhead towards Bolton would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. I was standing by a gate trying to divine the identity of a medium-sized brown bird pounce-hunting from a distant hawthorn bush when fifty-odd siskins passed low overhead, all a-twitter. The medium-sized brown bird remains one of those mysteries birdwatching gives you to stop you getting overconfident.

The knees asked if we really had to

The stretch of railway line between Little Hulton and Atherton betrays Cutacre's industrial past by the number of bridges going over it. The one at the end of this lane boasted a high, steep staircase on the South side and a shallow, stepped staircase into Cutacre.

Birch boletes 

Wooly chanterelles 

The path wound through coarse pasture, damp woodland and past small pools, one big enough for a spot of fishing. The damp woodland gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how little I know about fungi, only readily recognising the almost ubiquitous honey fungus. The boletes were largely bashed-about and earwig-chewed, the shaggy inkcaps more ink than cap. The jays and magpies in the trees managed to outshout the gulls passing overhead.

Mute swan, black-headed gulls and herring gulls

The path twisted and turned and emerged at the Eastern end of Swan Lake. A couple of pairs of mute swans cruised about among the crowds of gulls. Herring gulls crowded about this side of the island while black-headed gulls jostled about by the bank. There were a few lesser black-backs and one great black-back, a dreadnought amongst cruisers. I scanned through the crowds to get a bit of practice in for another Winter of baffled gullwatching but found no surprises.

Gadwalls 

Nearly all the ducks were gadwalls, the handful of mallards needed searching for (they were all hiding in the grass on the island tucked in amongst the Canada geese) and there were only a couple of tufted ducks. A drake wigeon in eclipse plumage mingled with the gadwalls.  A female garganey's been reported most days on the lake but I wasn't seeing it. There was no way of following the path as it passed along the South side of the lake without upsetting the ducks by the bank, they swam out into the centre of the lake and were all gadwalls. A fluttering dragonfly turned out to be a female common darter, slowed down a bit by the cool weather.

Black-headed gulls, coots and gadwalls 

 

Wigeon

I'd walked most of the way round when I saw a small duck asleep on the mud at the North side. It looked a bit dark and cold brown for a teal but with its beak tucked deep into its back feathers I couldn't be sure it wasn't one, it was the sort of light where black-headed gulls look grey. As I walked round to where the path meets Engine Road I'd convinced myself it was a teal. Then I noticed that where a metallic blue-green wing patch should be there was the stripe of black and white you'd expect on a garganey. Out there in plain view and I still struggled.

Guelder rose 

The Himalayan balsam was still game if faded, the scent mingling with the smell of damp leaves like the sad end to a party. I walked down Engine Lane into Atherton. Black-headed gulls were giving a buzzard a hard time as it sat on top of an electricity pylon. It looked like a reenactment of "King Kong" but they were too far away to get the photo I wanted. The titmice in the hedgerows were a lot closer but kept to cover away from the camera lens. As did the bullfinches working their way through the guelder roses and hawthorns.

Engine Lane 

The 582 to Bolton was due in five minutes so i got that and then the trains home. That was a walk I'll repeat.

Local patch

I had a lunchtime stroll through the local patch on my way for the bus to the Trafford Centre. I expected a very quiet time of it. And I was wrong.

Lostock Park 

It started off gently enough with just the usual quota of magpies and a lot of singing robins. Then I started noticing the shapes out on the football pitch and realised they were mistle thrushes. I'd given up on them, they hadn't been around for months, and now seven turn up. My not finding any treecreeper today was tempered by one of the dog walkers telling me he'd seen a family of them here in the Summer. 

Barton Clough 

There were a few blackbirds about in the park. There were a lot in the berry-laden shrubs by the old freight line. I almost certainly missed some. Ditto the members of the noisy mixed finch flock bouncing round in one of the few big maples that still have a green canopy of leaves.

• Black-headed gull 1
• Blackbirds 15
• Blue tit 1
• Bullfinch 1
• Carrion crow 3
• Feral pigeon 8
• Goldfinch 21
• Great tit 5
• Greenfinch 4
• Herring gull 3
• House sparrow 1
• Lesser black-back 5
• Magpie 7
• Mistle thrush 7
• Pied wagtail 1
• Robin 11, 7 singing
• Woodpigeon 12
• Wren 1

Leighton Moss

Coal tits and chaffinch 

We're not into the cold, wet weather yet and I'm already walking about like I'm on dodgy stilts. After a lazy day yesterday (after a busy night) I thought I'd get some gentle exercise to get the joints moving again and used one of my complementary rail tickets for a visit to Leighton Moss via Ulverston, checking out the estuaries of Morecambe Bay along the way.

I got the Barrow train to Ulverston, travelling up on the inland side. Even so I could see that the coastal pools by Leighton Moss were heaving with ducks and waders. A quick glance from the passing train took in scores of wigeon and black-tailed godwits as well as the usual black-headed gulls and mute swans. The tide was low on the Kent at Arnside. Curlews, shelducks and redshanks took a low tide breather on the exposed mud while goosanders cruised down the main channel. Carrion crows, jackdaws and woodpigeons were much in evidence, little egrets sporadically so and the only swallow of the day came as a surprise, passing by as the train pulled out of Grange-over-sands. A sign of season's passing was the flock of common gulls in a field just before Cark. A few eiders rested up on a mudbank as the train passed over the Leven and the sudden rise in numbers of herring gulls and lesser black-backs told me we were arriving in Ulverston. I've no idea why this town is such a magnet for large gulls but I'm not going to knock it.

I had twenty-five minutes to wait for the train back to Silverdale (I could have stayed on til Dalton but that connection always feels like I'm cutting it fine). The robins at the station were in fine song and made themselves very conspicuous, striking poses on the trackway before darting back into cover to start singing again. A pair of bullfinches whistled mournfully in the trees, they're almost a fixture here but I pretend to be surprised and delighted to make sure they don't think I'm taking them for granted.

The journey back was on the seaward side. There weren't as many eiders on this side on the Leven but there was a flock of greylags grazing on the bank while shelducks and a heron foraged on the mud and a mute swan cruised on of the channels. Carrion crows, rooks and little egrets worked the salt marshes, magpies and jackdaws the fields. Shelducks and redshanks peppered the beach at Grange-over-sands and a flock of black-headed gulls littered the Kent at Arnside. Just outside Arnside the first great white egret of the day shared a field with a heron.

Coal tits and goldfinch 

There were a lot of coal tits at Leighton Moss. They outnumbered and crowded out the blue tits and great tits on the feeders by the Hideout and only the ferocious buzzing of the goldfinches as they pecked right back at them stopped them monopolising the sunflower seeds. The chaffinches, robins and dunnocks stayed on the ground to pick up the spillage from the fights. The coal tits noticed and joined them.

Teal showing it's not just the mandarin ducks that can throw abstract shapes

The pool at Lilian's Hide was heaving, mostly with coots and gadwalls but oddly no tufted ducks. A few mallards, shovelers and teal loafed about, the first of what are very likely going to be legions of wigeons and pintails cruised about and dabbled in the water. Way over by the causeway a female marsh harrier floated over the reeds before jinking down into them. As I was getting up to leave I mentioned to a lady that it was odd to see no tufted and she pointed one out to me. I felt a bit better after that, as if some cosmic balance hadn't been upset.

Coots and gadwalls but, oddly, no tufted ducks

Shoveler

Teal 

Pintail 

By the path

It was a noisy quiet walk down into the reedbeds, most of the noise provided by a mixed flock of goldfinches and siskins bustling about in the alders near the sky tower. Robins sang in the willows and a small flock of half a dozen fieldfares chacked from the treetops on the railway embankment.

Honey fungus
As you can imagine, there's no end of wet dead wood hereabouts.

Reedbeds being quiet

Walking through the reedbeds was eerie quiet and I was glad of the occasional passing crow. Then, as I approached Tim Jackson's Hide a Cetti's warbler suddenly sprang into song from one side of the path and was answered by the piglet squeal of a water rail on the other.

Great white egret

Star of the show at Tim Jackson's was a great white egret taking a stroll along the bund, much to the inconvenience of the dozing teals it kept disturbing. That really narked-off sharp version of the quack isn't one you hear often outside the rough and tumble of the courtship season. The pool was liberally sprinkled with gadwalls and shovellers, including the hybrid drake shoveler x cinnamon teal which I haven't seen for a while. And yet again it struck me how very similar it looks to an Australasian shoveler (hybrids between two species of ducks often look very similar to a third and can be the stuff of nightmare in the field). A couple of first-Winter drakes had similar facial patterns with messier versions of the vertical white crescent shaped mark on their faces but the browny greys of their heads were warm earth tones with hints of bottle green rather than the slaty blue-grey of the hybrid. One first-Winter, possibly related, did have blue-grey tones but scarcely any white on its face.

The same great white egret, unfluffed

The walk round to the Griesdale Hide was punctuated with titmice, robins and wrens. There were more shovelers and gadwalls on the pool at the hide and a dabchick kept busy fishing by the bank. Cormorants loafed in the trees and on the osprey platform (the great black-backs have long gone) and a female-type marsh harrier quartered the far end of the reedbeds near the field where a busy tractor was being monitored by flocks of crows, rooks and black-headed gulls.

Dabchick

The walk back through the reedbeds was more eventful. Cetti's warblers sang, reed buntings flitted between willow trees, a skein of about a hundred and twenty pink-feet flew overhead and a migrant hawker patrolled the reeds by the grit trays (it was late in the day for bearded tits to be on the trays but you live in hope).

Leighton Moss 

The last through train to Manchester was due five minutes after I arrived back at the visitor centre so I toddled off for that. As we passed the coastal pools I could see that I missed flocks of lapwings and groups of teal and shovelers on the way up.

Mosses

Irlam Moss

It was yet another dull grey day. I caught up with my sleep and got the lunchtime train to Irlam for a wander over the mosses.

I walked down Astley Road. House sparrows muttered in the hedgerows and robins sang from every street corner. Just outside town a tractor was mowing one of the fields of turf and a ploughed field on the other side of the road was being picked over by magpies. Despite the robins singing in the trees and the blackbirds rummaging about in the verges it felt like a quiet walk. The goldfinches were in pairs, twittering from distant treetops and the woodpigeons and black-headed gulls were just passing by. There was a moment's excitement as a redwing jumped to the top of a hawthorn tree, chattered and jumped back down into the depths.

Roscoe Road 

I'd reached the junction with Roscoe Road when an object in the road caught my eye. I was puzzled for a moment then realised it was a male blackbird with a white rump and nape. I was digging in my bag for the camera when me and the blackbird both had to get out of the way of a lorry. For the next five minutes the blackbird paid peek-a-boo in and out of the bottom of the hedge by Worsley View and I gave up.

Crossing over the motorway it felt just as quiet. There were no signs of the flocks of pipits, wagtails and linnets of my last visit (it was a big ask to hope that the swallows might have lingered for my benefit). I managed, eventually, to find a distant couple of pied wagtails on the turf fields with the carrion crows and magpies. Starlings shared the telegraph wires with an immature kestrel, presumably thinking they were safer up there than as sitting ducks on the ground. The uneasy peace was disturbed when a crow chased the kestrel away and it retreated to a telegraph pole a couple of fields down. Further along I started meeting mixed tit flocks, blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits and at least one goldcrest. But it still felt very quiet 

Things changed at Four Lanes End.

A couple of dozen pink-footed geese flew high over, heading Northeast. The rough pasture at the corner of Lavender Lane was being cut and handfuls of pied wagtails and mistle thrushes were rummaging through the clippings. Way over on the far side of the field a couple of female-type marsh harriers were having a barney with the Little Wooden Moss carrion crows, a passing kestrel getting dragged into the fight for a moment before making a hasty exit. A couple more kestrels were sitting on the telegraph lines across the field. Evidently the mowing had disturbed a lot of small wildlife.

Twelve Yards Road 

As I turned and started walking down Twelve Yards Road a noisy couple of buzzards flew in to join the crowds. Further along the line of telegraph poles down the lane running North each had a carrion crow sitting on top. I'd just passed them when a male kestrel sped by with another male kestrel in hot pursuit. When the pursuer got to the end of the field of osier willows it stopped, rose up and circled high over the road making an odd squeaking noise I've never before heard from a kestrel. I've seen boundary disputes involving a lot of shouting and rough and tumble but not this sort of ritualised boundary marking before.

Chat Moss 

The walk down Twelve Yards Road to Cutnook Lane with the fields busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons, pheasants and stock doves was a lot calmer. The mixed tit flocks had chaffinches tagging along with them. 

I tend to use my 'phone for the landscape photography. The sun had poked through the clouds and the trees on the boundary of a field of barley stubble glowed golden against a slate grey sky. The 'phone had died. It's been playing up since I got a soaking a couple of weeks ago and when I had the battery replaced last weekend I discovered quite a bit of water damage so it didn't come as a shock though it was very inconvenient. As a precaution the past few days I've been recording in my notebook what I usually record directly on the BirdTrack app. The hour or so doing the update on my laptop is a nostalgia trip I'll be happy to forgo once the new 'phone's sorted.

A male sparrowhawk stooped over the field at the corner of Cutnook Lane. On his departure a bunch of chaffinches, blue tits and blackbirds emerged from the hedges. They took no notice of the calling of a buzzard from the trees further down Twelve Yards Road.

The fields and paddocks down the road by the motorway were busy with woodpigeons, black-headed gulls, carrion crows and magpies. It came as a shock to discover that the song thrush bobbing along by a piece of cut turf was my first of the month.

By pure dumb luck I had five minutes to wait for the 100 to the Trafford Centre and thence home. The circular walks from Irlam to Irlam over the mosses are always productive even if they're predictably unpredictable.

Etherow Country Park

Mandarin duck

I thought I'd ease myself into the week with a nosy at the mandarin ducks at Etherow Country Park. Evidently somebody had 'phoned ahead to warn them, they were extremely thin on the ground this afternoon.

Tufted duck

For a change I got the train to Rose Hill Marple and then got the 383 to Compstall and walked up to Etherow Country Park. At first sight the only difference to the other week was that there were a few more tufted ducks in the mix by the car park and there was no sign of the usual greylags. A surprisingly loud goldcrest took issue with my walking too close to one of the bushes by the garden centre.

Canada x greylag goose

Etherow Country Park

Walking down by the canal I was struck by the lack of finches and mixed tit flocks. There were great tits and blue tits about but operating as pairs or singletons. On the other hand there were plenty of singing robins and wrens and a few blackbirds mussed up the leaves at the pathside.

Robin

Now the leaves are falling the views of the river opened up by the Spring tree felling become more obvious. It was an opportunity for me to look for dippers. I'd convinced myself I hadn't seen one in over a year, actually it was June this year. In any case, I didn't see one now. As I scanned the river from the bridge by the weir I found a couple of juvenile grey wagtails skipping round near the canal overflow and a lady and her small boy found a mink fossicking about near the rocks by the bridge.

Mink

The feeders in the Paddock Garden by Weir House were busy with titmice. Blue tits, great tits and coal tits jostled for position but the long-tailed tits I kept hearing were staying in the trees by the river above the weir.

Blue tit

I still hadn't seen any mandarin ducks. I wandered round the drowned willows in the pool by Weir House and eventually found a couple lurking in the shadows. But only a couple. The drake was busy preening and I was struck how the abstract shapes and high contrast colours that would make him strikingly conspicuous out in the open worked as camouflage with the lights and shadows in the depths of the drowned willow branches.

Mandarin duck

The same bird without the camera automatically amping up the ISO, a lot closer to what I was seeing through my bins

Keg Wood

A half hour's wander round Keg Wood until the joints shouted barleys found me a mixed tit flock — blue tits, great tits, coal tits, goldcrests and nuthatches but, again, no long-tailed tits — and a surprise in a noctule bat flying high about the tree tops. The weather wasn't brilliant but I hadn't realised it was that gloomy. The titmice had been keeping their distance but once I started taking photos of fungi they came to have a look at what I was doing.

Yellow waxcap

Honey pinkgill

Keg Wood

I think this is a milkcap

Walking back I passed a family of long-tailed tits bouncing round the pathside willows keeping aloof from the blue tits and great tits on the other side of the canal. I'd been wondering where the Muscovy ducks were and bumped into a couple dozing under a bush by an angler's platform. 

Etherow Country Park

Cormorant and black-headed gulls

Tufted ducks
The first-Winter drake on the right made me look twice. On his left-hand side his sides were pale grey-brown, on his right-hand side it was nearly white and nearly covered the wing. At a distance in this type of light I might have been tempted to say lesser scaup.

I got the 383 into Romiley and while I waited for the train to Manchester the station jackdaws kept me under close observation.

Jackdaw

Mersey Valley

Mallards, Jackson's Boat

Yesterday at dawn there were 79 black-headed gulls on the school playing field, today there were just sixteen. If there's a pattern to their occurrence I'm not seeing it.

The early morning's errand done I got an hour's kip, filled myself up with an unseemly amount of tea and toast and took advantage of the bus strike being called off to get the 25 into Chorlton and walk home via a circuitous route.

Hawthorn Lane

I got off the bus at Ryebank Road, crossed over, nipped through Meadow Court and onto Hawthorn Lane into the woods by Turn Moss and thence into Ivy Green. It was a grey morning threatening to become a sunny lunchtime and there were plenty of people — and their dogs — about. As I walked along there was a clattering about by woodpigeons and magpies, squirrels and jays dropped acorns on my head and there was a screeching of parakeets. That last would a constant feature of the walk together with the songs of robins and wrens. There were blue tits and great tits about but they weren't organised into mixed flocks, they were still going around in pairs. Magpies and carrion crows rummaged around in the meadow on Ivy Green and a pair of mute swans flew overhead heading for Sale Water Park.

Chorlton Ees 

Chorlton Ees was similarly busy with people and shy of birds, though they were about if you looked hard enough for long enough. Again the titmice weren't flocking, unlike the goldfinches working their way through the alders and birch trees fringing the hay meadow. Woodpigeons pillaged oak trees, magpies and blackbirds gorged on haws, squirrels filled their cheek pouches with anything going. Chaffinches and nuthatches called in the trees and a great spotted woodpecker flew overhead into the thick woodland. I thought it was too cool for butterflies and a speckled wood proved me wrong as it foraged for honeydew on the leaves of a sycamore tree.

It was all go on the river at Jackson's Boat, there were almost as many mallards as people. Dunnocks joined the tutting chorus of robins, wrens and great tits as I walked past the car park to the path alongside Barrow Brook. A passing buzzard was barracked by a crowd of jackdaws feeding on the field on Sale Ees, they couldn't be bothered taking flight to badger it.

By Barrow Brook

There was plenty enough water on Barrow Brook for a crowd of mallards, the surrounding woodland would have been quiet but for the parakeets and a pair of nuthatches.

Sale Water Park 

The target birds for the walk had been long-tailed tits and moorhens and I'd somehow contrived to see neither until I got to Sale Water Park. The moorhens were puttering about by the islands on the lake. The long-tailed tits were in the only mixed tit flock of the day bouncing through the willows and dogwoods on the bank. Over on the slipway a large herd of mute swans were mugging for scraps, muscling out any Canada geese, mallards or coots similarly on the cadge. On the water every buoy had a black-headed gull on it and the pair that are joined together to form the starting point for canoe races also had a couple of common gulls on the crossbar. The pontoon was standing room only, there was barely enough room for the cormorants to flex their wings. A few black-headed gulls cruised about on the water with the great crested grebes which were staying over that side away from the Saturday anglers. I was surprised to see speckled woods flying across the lake to the islands, I don't often see them out in the open like that.

The willows have sprung up in front of the hide on Broad Ees Dole, scanning the pool with the binoculars was a lot like looking through a series of keyholes. Shovelers and teal loafed and preened on the islands, a few more shovelers and a lot of moorhens rummaged channels through the duckweed. It took me a while to find a dabchick, it was dozing by one of the islands in the middle of a group of teal. The only heron of the day was stalking the reedbeds on the far side. For once there was literally nothing on Teal Pool and my hopes that the Cetti's warbler might have returned came to naught.

Stretford Ees

Stretford Ees was remarkably quiet. Jackdaws and woodpigeons passed overhead and a couple of parakeets called from the trees by the river but even the great tits, wrens and robins I saw going about their business in the undergrowth were staying silent. Unlike the pigeons under the tram bridge by Hawthorn Road that were enthusiastically working at making baby pigeons.

I walked along Kickety Brook onto Stretford Meadows. There didn't seem a lot about in the hedgerows but what was about was making plenty of noise whether it was the woodpigeons and jays in the trees, the great tits and coal tits in the bushes or the jackdaws passing overhead. One feature of the walk was the number of cyclists who were considerate of pedestrian traffic on the paths and said thank you when I stood to one side. It really shouldn't be remarkable but it is and I'm grateful to them all for restoring my faith a little.

Hemp agrimony 

Stretford Meadows 

It had become a warm, sunny afternoon. I freely admit that I was flagging by the time I got to Stretford and heading straight for the steep slope of the mound didn't even seem a good idea at the time. Still, it gave the system a good workout and the knees took it remarkably well. On the plus side it meant that it was a long, gentle coast down to Newcroft Road. There were a remarkable lot of birds about and they were nearly all woodpigeons, upward of two hundred and fifty of them scattered through the hawthorns and young oak trees. Every so often a flock would clatter into flight as a walker or a dog got too close, or in one case when the usual buzzard passed low overhead calling all the way. Aside from the woodpigeons there were a handful of magpies and a couple of singing robins. In terms of diversity it was very below average but I've not seen as much tonnage of bird flesh on here for a very long time. While all this was going on a migrant hawker was zipping around hunting flies over the large stands of Michaelmas daisies.

Parakeets and spadgers called from the hedgerows as I popped into the garden centre for a nosy. I was planning on buying some pansies for the pots by the front door, was very tempted to buy a load of hellebores for non-existent gaps in a couple of borders and ended up buying lavender and catmint for an old strawberry planter I've got by the kitchen door. I probably will buy a load of hellebores anyway.

I had an errand to run at teatime (I got drenched last week and my 'phone's none the better for it). On the way back I stopped off at the station to look at a pretty sunset. Just as I was wrong to think it had been too cool for butterflies I was wrong to think it was too cool for bats. The usual soprano pipistrelle was dancing over the field by the station, and very nice too.

A Humphrey Park sunset