Wellacre Country Park

Wellacre Country Park 

It was too nice a day for lolling about the house saying it's too nice a day not to play out in. I had a teatime wander round Wellacre Country Park to see what was about.

The pollen count was moderate. I've been a bit cocky with the hay fever this year, largely due to the long cool and windy spell earlier in the month. It's caught up with me on the coat-tails of the heatwave and I've noone to blame except myself for not taking the necessary additional precautions for walking past people mowing lawns and landscapes full of flowering grass. Today I felt like somebody had cut all the strings.

For most of the day I contented myself with watching the blue tits and butterflies elbowing each other off the Pyracantha blossom. The spadgers are making a great deal about my not filling the feeders with seed, as per the advice from the RSPB this year, but it's not stopping them quietly demolishing the fat balls. And there were times when I couldn't hear the radio for the wren and the blackcap, they both having parked themselves in the boysenberries by the living room window. 

I don't usually get dragonflies in the garden before Midsummer and they're usually common darters. And I rarely get brown hawkers this side of August Bank Holiday so it was a surprise to see one patrolling the tops of the dog rose.

The magpie moths have suddenly emerged in the front garden.

Wellacre Wood 

The rooks of Town Gate were raucous. It sounded like the youngsters had vacated the rookery but only as far as the trees across the road. Blackbirds, woodpigeons and wrens sang as I approached Wellacre Wood where they were joined by chiffchaffs, robins and goldfinches. Speckled woods fluttered about the woodland edges, the currently almost inevitable painted ladies sunned themselves out in the open. The depths of the wood, usually quiet, was noisy with the songs of blackcaps, robins and a song thrush.

I walked past the fields to Jack Lane. A ring-necked parakeet screeched overhead as it flew to the roost by the school. Parakeets seem to roost by the clock rather than by sunlight, except in the depths of Winter when they barely get out of bed at all. Carrion crows and woodpigeons rummaged about in the fields, robins and goldfinches sang from the hawthorns and a chiffchaff sang from a tree on the margins.

Wellacre Country Park 

The spadgers fussing about in the hedgerows of Jack Lane were joined by a singing whitethroat trying to make itself heard over the barker's p.a. announcements at the funfair over in Irlam. I looked across the fields to the locks where small groups of sand martins swirled about and starlings shuttled between the water treatment works and the housing estate.

The Cetti's warbler on Jack Lane Nature Reserve made itself heard over the funfair but the reed warblers, reed buntings and even a blackcap struggled. The water rail had no trouble at all. The coots and moorhens kept to the pools deep in the reedbeds; the moorhens had chicks, the coots might have but I wasn't sure.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

There were plenty of pond skaters, whirligig beetles and biting midges on the pool by the path but no signs of any tadpoles. I hadn't realised how long I'd been quietly standing there until a couple of reed warblers emerged from the reeds, stopped suddenly in their tracks, uttered notes of surprise and shot back into the reeds. A long-tailed tit flew over to the tree beside me to tell me it was time I should be moving on.

Walking to Dutton's Pond 

The black-headed gulls were starting to head to the Salford Quays roost as I walked over to Dutton's Pond. Just ones and twos this time of day, an hour or so later they'd be a dozen at a time. The blue tits near the pond had noisy youngsters wanting feeding. The anglers were making the most of a pleasant Saturday teatime so the mallards and moorhens loafed quietly in the cover of the flag irises.

The walk through the reeds and tall grasses of the nature reserve caught up with me. I'd taken the precaution of greasing my nostrils and upper lip so I had only a slightly runny nose but I had to give my eyes a quick swill using the water bottle top as an impromptu eye bath. Which served well enough until I got home and could do it properly.

Green Hill 

Given the itchiness I wondered whether I should walk up Green Hill at all. In the end I did but I was careful to stick to the well-trodden paths. The great tits by the railway line had youngsters. Given how quiet and furtive they were I suspect at least two pairs of whitethroats had active nests. Overhead the jackdaws started making tracks for their roosts and swallows and swifts hawked low over the top of the hill, with more swallows down by the stables. I was probably a couple of hours early for the barn owls I keep being told about.

River Mersey 

Blackbirds, great tits, robins, wrens, woodpigeons and goldfinches sang by the river. I stood on the bridge and watched downstream as a swarm of swifts and sand martins hawked over the river. There's less tree cover upstream of the bridge so only a handful of sand martins were up that way. A couple of drake mallards were the only birds I could see on the river.

I walked into Flixton where I had twenty minutes to wait for my train, which turned out to be one of the few ones running to schedule without incident today, a nice change. Blackbirds, dunnocks, a robin and a song thrush serenaded the passengers on the other side waiting for a Liverpool train delayed until the Second Coming. The bullfinch wheezily joining in for a couple of minutes was unexpected. A couple of blackbirds dueled at Humphrey Park and three swifts screamed overhead. The blackcap and the robin sang me over the doorstep. I was ready for a pot of tea.

Wellacre Country Park 

Rixton

Corn bunting 
The "tooth" in the upper mandible and the notch in the lower (obscured by his tongue) are used for cracking open large seeds. I've no idea what he did to his tail.

It was another lovely day. After spending all of the first three-quarters of the month bitching about the dull, cool, windy weather I am not to be moaning about the onset of Summer. I had not the energy for a day out and decided I'd have a go at looking for quails locally. Over the past week they've been reported singing in the mosslands, with reports of a couple just outside Rixton nearly every other day. That area's been on my to-do list for a very long time so after I'd renewed my monthly travel card I got the train over to Glazebrook and set off for a walk.

After a cloudy start it became a brilliantly sunny day but not as oppressively hot as it has been. Blackbirds and a collared dove sang as the station. Dunnocks, goldfinches, chiffchaffs, robins and wrens joined in from the gardens as I walked down the road and great tits fidgeted through the hedgerows. Butterflies were out in numbers: large whites, orange tips, small whites and painted ladies fluttering about the gardens and roadsides.

By Dam Head Lane

I turned onto Dam Head Lane for the meandering walk into Rixton. There were songs in the hedgerows but it was mostly quiet in the fields. A few woodpigeons and carrion crows passed by, a pair of swifts swooped low over the barley and a couple of skylarks sang. Every so often a call from a pheasant or the sudden emergence and just as sudden disappearance of linnets, goldfinches or blackbirds hinted at the activity hidden underneath all those ripening ears.

Dam Head Lane 

I was heading for Moss Side Lane so instead of carrying on down Dam Lane into Hollins Green I took the footpath heading across the fields. From hereon in it was a new walk for me and I was interested how it would work out. It had been a lovely walk but quiet birdwatching so far and I was wondering if it was going to be more of the same.

The footpath across the fields

Walking across open fields of corn and barley was inevitably going to be a bit quiet for birdwatching. Goldfinches, linnets and skylarks hinted at their presence rather than presented themselves. Contact calls from the depths, small figures disappearing from the tractor wheel wide gaps on my approach, that sort of thing. Blackbirds and blackcaps sang from the trees in the village and a buzzard lazily floated over that way. Oddly, although it felt like dead flat walking i could see that the horizon dipped and fell gently as I progressed, as if the ghosts of the undulations of the drumlins left behind by the Ice Age had survived generations of ploughing of the land.

I had to tiptoe round painted lady butterflies sunning themselves on the path. There were dozens of them. Most were faded and slightly tattered, some very ragged and quite a few almost creamy white. Every so often a fresh, bright salmon-orange individual would flitter past and I'd have to look twice to be sure I wasn't missing something. As I crossed the little bridge over a land drain I spotted a large red damselfly in the brooklime lining the drain. A little further on a Southern hawker zipped past. It feels like the hawker dragonflies are very early this year but that's probably just because I had the first half of May without any dragonflies whatever.

The tree is by the bridge over the land drain

I got to Moss Side Lane and walked up past the brickworks. The trees and gardens were filled with song and the blue tits had hungry youngsters buzzing about them as they worked their way through the trees. Common blue damselflies zipped about the trees by the roadside pools a little way past the houses.

I was heading for Woodend Lane which runs between Moss Side Lane and Holly Bush Lane, the stretch where the quails had been reported singing. This lane runs parallel to the train line and Manchester Road and is about the same distance from both. It's the open mosslands hidden from the railway by the big mound at the landfill site at the end of Moss Side Lane and hidden from the road by houses and Rixton Clay pits so it was a new landscape to me.

Woodend Lane 

It was only a short walk to Woodend Lane. I had a nice surprise when I got there: there was a cuckoo calling from somewhere over by the landfill site. I'd quite given up on cuckoos for this year. The first stretch of the lane was bounded by tall hedges. Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, wrens and chaffinches sang while families of blue tits and great tits bustled by. Just past the farmhouses the landscape suddenly opened up completely and the game changed. A lot.

Lapwing chick

There seemed to be more painted ladies than gravel on the lane. This didn't distract from the swifts overhead, the woodpigeons and carrion crows foraging in the field North of the lane or the lapwings in the ploughed field to the South making sure that my attention was directed at them in their half of the field while their youngsters pottered about in the other. 

Painted lady

The scene was filled with the songs of skylarks and whitethroats. So much so that it was a while before I was picking up the third section in the songscape and more yet before I realised what I was hearing. I hadn't realised how infrequently I'm hearing corn buntings singing these days. One flew up to sing from the telegraph wires, dwarfing both the whitethroat and the goldfinch already sat there. It wasn't just a trick of perspective that it looked twice the size, it was half as big again and there's a lot more meat on a corn bunting. As I got closer I wondered what it had done to its tail, the ends were worn to ribbons.

Woodend Lane 

I walked along hearing skylarks, whitethroats and corn buntings, the occasional bit of twittering from goldfinches and a reed bunting singing from a far corner of the field margins but no quails. I didn't feel disappointed, it was an extremely pleasant walk and there was plenty much else about. More lapwings, woodpigeons, carrion crows and pheasants. More swifts. A lot more butterflies. A few black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs drifted to and from overhead the landfill site, it's not a promising site for scavenging but I suppose they have to check it out for form's sake. A buzzard floated about the trees by the railway line, a pair of buzzards over the trees by the road.

Approaching Holly Bush Lane 

I reached Holly Bush Lane and turned to walk down to Manchester Road for the bus back. I checked the times, the 100 to the Trafford Centre was due in fifty minutes and it was about twenty minutes' walk. I almost missed the bus.

Yellow wagtail
They wouldn't let me any closer

As I walked down I had a reminder of the scheme of things: pied wagtails fuss about barns, yellow wagtails barley and both on ploughed fields. A ploughed field littered with lapwings, carrion crows, wagtails and woodpigeons also had a family of mistle thrushes, the youngest having that peculiar mildewed effect of the plumage which breaks up the shape of a pale bird on dark soil surprisingly well. At a glance when they keep still they have a look of bits of debris or ploughed-up stones. I almost missed the meadow pipits in the corner.

Painted lady

The carpet of painted ladies was joined by red admirals. Yellow wagtails and corn buntings sang on the telegraph wires. I heard more corn buntings on this walk that I did all last year. 

Corn bunting 

Corn bunting 

Corn bunting 

I was trying to work out whether a pair of whitethroats had youngsters in a hawthorn bush when a hare ran across the road. It shot down a furrow in the ploughed field and I couldn't help thinking there should have been greyhounds in racing colours in pursuit.

Holly Bush Lane 

I was surprised to see a reed warbler fussing about the corner of a field near a farmstead. But then it's only a field away from the clay pits so it ought not to have been such a surprise. Greenfinches, blackbirds and a song thrush sang by the farmsteads and swallows joined the swifts over the trees. A family of great spotted woodpeckers made themselves known and razzed me as I passed. And a kestrel hovered over the corner of the field at the end of the lane. I'd barely arrived at the bus stop when the bus turned up.

The nature reserve at Rixton Claypits is on my to-do list. Today I'd walked right around without visiting it. This was definitely a walk I should do again. And I really have to get round to visiting the nature reserve.

Sett Valley

Juvenile great spotted woodpecker, Bluebell Wood

Well, what a ropey old night's sleep that was!  It was a cooler night with a nice breeze and the rolling thunder was forecast to carry on until dawn. I dozed off peacefully enough but was woken up by the thunderstorm being on top of us. I was woken not by the thunder but by the dead still humid air. It moved on and conditions became more bearable but could I get back to sleep? Could I buttons. So I charted the course of the dawn chorus from the blackbird kicking in at five to four, the blackbird duel thereafter, the robin putting in the first of its occasional placeholders just before dawn, the wren and the blackcap singing solidly for an hour and the two woodpigeons singing at each other from the chimney pot. The spadgers waited until six to set out in the world and I for one couldn't blame them.

I didn't have the energy for anything ambitious so the three planned days out that have been nagging at me all week stay parked on the shelves. The trajectory of my birdwatching is North and West because that's the prevailing pattern of the local public transport, the more so since my local trains stopped calling at Deansgate so I've lost that simple cross-city connection. In an effort to push against that a bit I decided I'd go over to Hayfield and have a leisurely dawdle along a short piece of the Sett Valley Trail.

Jackdaw, New Mills

I got the Sheffield train to New Mills Central and walked up to the bus stop on the corner. The 60, 61 and 358 go to Hayfield and are pretty regular, the only pitfall is making sure you're getting the bus going the right way — Hayfield or Glossop, not Buxton or Stockport, they all go from the same bus stop.

I got off the bus at Hayfield Bus Station — a bus stop in the car park — and walked over to the corner where the trail starts. It was a Very lovely afternoon but not as blisteringly hot as it has been. A party of swifts screamed overhead, there was a reassuringly rich songscape — blackbirds, greenfinches, wrens, woodpigeons, blackcaps, chaffinches and a great tit — and a nice, easy walk ahead.

Sett Valley Trail 

The hedgerows were busy with robins, wrens and blue tits, and jackdaws chattered as they passed overhead. There was more of the same as I walked into Bluebell Wood, with the addition of family parties of great tits, the weird calls of nuthatches and the songs of chiffchaffs, dunnocks and a song thrush. I would have overlooked the great spotted woodpecker nest, I don't go looking for nests as a rule, but the incessant calling of the youngster stuck in the doorway made it impossible to miss or ignore.

Juvenile great spotted woodpecker 

Bluebell Wood 

It was nice to see some tadpoles in the little pond. All the likely places I've checked out to date have been the casualties of a dry Spring.

Common frog tadpoles

Large whites and orange tips fluttered about the more open parts of the wood. A bullfinch wheezed out a song somewhere in the canopy then stopped short as if it had run out of breath. The jackdaws and woodpigeons had gone quiet. A sparrowhawk casually skimmed the treetops and headed into the village and the soundscape resumed. All except the bullfinch, which was probably exhausted by its effort.

Bluebell Wood 

Sett Valley Trail 

Across the Sett Valley 

I rejoined the trail and walked along as the valley opened up and the river and hills could be seen behind the wayside trees. Swallows and house martins flew high over the valley and a kestrel hovered over the fields over the other side. I scanned the riverside and was puzzled to see the tops of orange heads poking out of the long grass. There were four drake mandarin ducks loafing with a few drake mallards.

Birch Vale Reservoir 

Birch Vale Reservoir is small but picturesque as you look down on it from the trail. A couple of mallards dozed under the trees on the little island. I walked the length of the reservoir then decided to turn and head back to the bus stop. I was out for a bit of a toddle rather than a proper walk. On the way back there was a lot more of the same, with the addition of a young great spotted woodpecker bouncing through the canopy of a small oak tree at least as inelegantly as any woodpigeon, and a coal tit singing by the old level crossing.

Birch Vale Reservoir 

I really don't know why I don't do this walk more often. The scenery is lovely, the birdwatching is good and the walking a doddle. I didn't have long to wait for the Glossop bus. I counted the jackdaws on the rolling green Peak District countryside then got the trains home from Glossop.

Lazy day

It was a slightly cooler, lovely day with a welcome breeze. Try as I might I couldn't do anything with it, two nights without sleep took their toll. I sat and watched the titmice in the garden, the young blue tits not quite grasping that the idea is to sit on the inside of the rowan tree canopy not loaf about on the outer twigs in full view, and the young great tits barging about in the sycamores like drunken monkeys. I wonder if the blackcap's being productive of anything much more than incessant song. Fingers crossed there'll be more fluffy bundles barrelling into the garden.

Orrell Water Park

I couldn't not do anything with a nice day like this so I dragged myself out of the house mid-afternoon. I won't bore the reader with the sequence of indecisions that led me to be sitting by the lake at Orrell Water Park late teatime thinking that there are worse things in this life than this. A family of mallards sat under the bench behind me, Canada geese crowded about the car park and half a dozen black-headed gulls flew in to pick midges off the lake.

On the way home I noticed that the mute swans on the Bridgewater Canal by Patricroft Bridge had six cygnets in tow.

It does no harm once every so often to be reminded to stop and breathe.

Mersey Valley again

Banded demoiselle, by Kenworthy Woods

The great tits brought their youngsters into the garden this morning. The parents spent a lot of their time ferrying insects picked off the Pyracantha flowers to the youngsters shivering their wings in the rowan tree. The rowan tree's serving as a kindergarten for titmice this year.

It hadn't warmed down much so I parked the plans for another day. Then between my leaving the house and my arriving at the station the train to Warrington was cancelled so that knocked another idea on the head. So I went over to the Trafford Centre and played bus station bingo. The 248 to the airport was first out. That gave me the options of Wellacre Country Park, Carrington Moss, Banky Meadow, Priory Gardens or Wythenshawe Park. Priory Gardens offered more shade and I could then move on to Sale Water Park and see where I go from there.

Blackbird

I got off the bus and walked into Priory Gardens. Most of the woodland locally was planted within my lifetime, the gardens were abandoned well before that and has a lot of mature trees and not a lot of understory except at the margins. Blackbirds, blackcaps, robins and chiffchaffs sang in the trees and bushes by the main path at the side. A pair of mistle thrushes held court further in, rattling their displeasure at my passing by.

Priory Gardens 

I meandered my way back to the main path and then onto the patch of meadow at the corner by the motorway. I'd hoped there might be a whitethroat about but I was disappointed. Blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the hedgerows. Speckled woods and holly blues fluttered about the woodland margins, large whites and common blues across the meadow. At last! My first common blue damselflies of the year zipped about the brambles in the hedgerows.

Common blue damselfly

That small patch had a remarkable miscellany of intertwining brambles in flower, including one with big, semi-double flowers. Any time I despair of the ludicrous complexities of gull watching I think of botanists studying brambles.

Bramble
A semi-double form

Bramble
A narrow-petalled form

I crossed the motorway into Sale Water Park. It being the Whit Week school holidays it was bedlam though the mute swans and Canada geese were making a living by it so long as they didn't mind sharing the lake with kids and dogs. The car park was swarming with common blue damselflies.

Common blue damselfly

Barrow Brook 

I walked round and joined the path by Barrow Brook and suddenly everything was a lot quieter. Or would have been had the parakeets turned it down a bit. Blackbirds, blackcaps, dunnocks and wrens were doing most of the heavy lifting with the singing with chiffchaffs, robins and a song thrush doing the backing vocals. Blue tits fidgeted about in the trees and a family of long-tailed tits worked their way through the willows by the brook.

I emerged blinking into the sunlight at Jackson's Boat. There was a nice breeze blowing down the river so I decided I'd walk down to Kenworthy Woods, the advantage being that this was the side of the river with some shade. I was grateful for it, too, despite the breeze.

River Mersey 

The river was low after a dry Spring. Mallards and Canada geese loafed by the waterside and a cormorant swam downstream. Whitethroats and blue tits fidgeted about in the willows on the bank, more whitethroats sang on the golf course with blackcaps and chiffchaffs. Banded demoiselles fluttered about the bank, the green females out in the open, the dramatic blue males tending to keep to the cover of vegetation.

Banded demoiselle

A grey wagtail was where I expected it to be. Less expected were the half a dozen sand martins nesting in the same place. The sand martins hawked low over the river, it was rare that they rose above the bank. The top of the bank was busy with banded demoiselles, painted ladies, large whites and common blues, making up in numbers for a dismal first half of the month. A little further along a pair of mandarin ducks loafed by the water. They're becoming a lot more common on our stretch of the Mersey.

Mandarin ducks

Latest contender for the giant butterbur leaf of the year

Hand for scale

Approaching Kenworthy Woods 

Swifts and swallows hawked over the river as I wandered on and into Kenworthy Woods. The woodland songscape was quieter, more dispersed but still a steady backing track to the walk. Blue tits and long-tailed trees fidgeted through the trees but there was a notable absence of great tits. My surprise at surprising a rabbit almost had me miss a bullfinch quietly exiting the scene stage left. 

Kenworthy Woods 

Brimstones and speckled woods fluttered about the woodside margins as I headed for the bus stop on the other side of the motorway, and an extended family of long-tailed tits stretched itself over the hawthorn bushes punctuating the complex of slip roads. I contemplated staying on the bus and having a wander round Alexandra Park but the convenience of the connection with my bus home at Hough End proved too alluring, much to the relief of a pair of feet desperate to get out of hot boots.