A walk along the Irwell

Canada geese and cormorant 

The young blue tits in the back garden are gaining in confidence, a couple are striking out on their own. The usual pattern is that after a few weeks at least one will start tagging along with a troupe of spadgers and that'll see them through the Winter. The robin had the first hour of the dawn chorus to itself then kept quiet most the rest of the morning. The blackbird was unusually late and kept singing on and off throughout lunchtime. The reason for the latter turned out to be an interloper, a male who stationed himself on the garden fence whenever he wasn't provocatively hunting for worms on next door's lawn. Even the female blackbird came out to protest about that.

It was another sunshine and showers day. I played bus station bingo at the Trafford Centre and got off the 52 at Kersal Wetlands.

It became a sunny afternoon. Sand martins hawked and swooped low over the river. A few drake mallards dabbled about the far bank, a pastoral idyll ruined when one hapless drake evidently said or did the wrong thing and was gang-raped by the others. Mallards are not gentle lovers at the best of times but even so I was rather shocked by this. Not as much as the victim, which spent the next five minutes rearranging its plumage before joining the others who were pottering about as if nothing had happened. It's never a good idea to look too hard at mallards in the breeding season.

Kersal Wetlands 

Blackbirds, wrens and robins were doing the bulk of the singing in the hedgerows by the houses with assists from robins, blackcaps and goldfinches. I got out into the open, looked at the sweeping flowering meadows, thought of hayfever and decided to have a walk amongst the trees on the riverbank. But not before I'd noticed there were some early purple orchids about.

Early purple orchid

River Irwell

The walk along the riverbank was full of dramatic lighting effects, the songs of blackbirds, chiffchaffs, robins, chaffinches and song thrushes filled the air and were punctuated by the raucous calls of gangs of carrion crows and ring-necked parakeets. On the river pairs of tufted ducks and mallards were rather a lot more decorously behaved than the hooligans downstream. Half a dozen Canada geese cruised lazily upstream past a loafing cormorant. A couple more cormorants flew overhead. Jackdaws fussed in the trees on the far bank and woodpigeons clattered about in treetops.

Walking by the riverbank 

The titmice were in stealth mode, and no wonder as the blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits all had youngsters in tow and the magpies were out in force.

Grey wagtail 
I'll not win any prizes with it but I'm glad I got a photo of this bird flycatching.

I checked out the shoals and shingles on the bends of the river looking for grey wagtails and soon found a family of them. One was using a mid-stream rock as a launching pad for flycatching sallies and had a pretty impressive strike rate, nearly every time it came back with an insect in its beak. A mayfly and, I think, an alder fly were amongst the bag.

One of the shingle beaches on the river

It had become warm and sunny, as long as you were out of the cool breeze, and the butterflies came out to play. Large whites and orange-tips fluttered about the sweet rocket on the bank, peacocks and speckled woods amongst the nettles and rank grass between the trees. Give it a month or so and this will all be invisible behind pink masses of Himalayan balsam. I noticed that every giant hogweed along the bank had been doused generously with weedkiller.

Spot the parakeet
If ring-necked parakeets could Keep quiet for longer than half a second they'd be impossible to find.

Ring-necked parakeet

Giddy with swarms of sand martins and grey wagtails bouncing along the far bank I found myself actively looking for dippers and kingfishers. I'm old enough to remember the Irwell being declared biologically dead. How times change. I didn't find any dippers or kingfishers, though. 

Walking by the river

As the river turned its sharpest bend willow warblers sang in the sallows and white poplars. I don't know why this is the point where they take over from the chiffchaffs, there were chiffchaffs singing from the woods on the opposite bank. The path is roped off here as the trees have adopted perilous angles in an effort to race the bank into the river. I could have ducked under the rope and carried on but I didn't want it to be this week that is be crushed by a tree. I headed inland and up the bank to the circular walk around the wetlands.

Kersal Wetlands, Manchester city centre in the background 

Down in the lake pairs of coots fed unlovely bald and gawky chicks, quietly steering them away from any herons that were lurking about on the islands. Canada geese and their goslings, similarly, preferred the company of people to the herons. I found just the one dabchick and I was frankly surprised to see that one out in the open this time of year.

Looking downstream from the bridge, including Canada geese 

I walked round to the bridge over to Kersal Dale. I'd have liked to have carried on walking upstream but the riverside paths peter out here for a stretch and I wasn't in the mood for working my way round to the back of Salford Sports Village and Agecroft Cemetery. I'd be better off picking up the 66 from Eccles sometime and picking up the walk from Drinkwater Park. Much better, then, to cross over and walk back downstream through Kersal Dale.

Kersal Dale 

Community blue damselfly 

Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, robins, chaffinches and a song thrush made themselves heard over parakeets, crows and magpies. A treecreeper quietly told me to move along as I paused by its tree to take photos of common blue damselflies. A little further along the Himalayan balsams were alive with banded demoiselles. 

Female banded damselfly 

The male damselflies were keeping a low profile when they weren't chasing the ladies.

Swifts hawked high over the meadows, sand martins hawked low over the river. I reached a bench at a bend and sat down to scan over the shingles on the river, jocularly reminding myself I was looking for dippers and kingfishers. Mallards drifted downstream. Grey wagtails and robins flitted about. Blackbirds came down for a drink and song thrushes chased each other over the river. A kingfisher flew upstream. I didn't have time to grab my camera and it would have been a lousy photo anyway so I just enjoyed the moment as it flew by and shot upstream.

River Irwell 

I forget that on this side of the river the banks are steep and ofttimes muddy. Wrens and blackbirds churred me on my way and a family of great tits blew raspberries as I passed them along one of the several flights of steps. My knees and wind both needed the exercise after a fairly lazy week and both had a grumble about it.

Kersal Dale 

I got up to Bury New Road, looked at the time and decided to head off home, getting the bus into Manchester. Given its urban setting I'm always surprised how productive this walk is. I should know by now.

Leighton Moss

Black-headed gulls 

It was the start of meteorological Summer, so of course it was grey and cool and pouring down. I won't complain about it, for all that most of May was grey and cool and windy it was very dry and the ground needs the water.

I got me an old man's explorer ticket with a view to sitting in the dry as the landscape passes by. The Barrow train was the next one out so I thought I'd start the excursion by heading into Cumbria then coming back down again. I still haven't gone further up the Cumbrian coast this year and didn't today, the connections at Barrow are such that the train out to Corkicle (the line beyond is still under repair) leaves before the train from Manchester arrives. The early morning train to Windermere connects with the Corkicle train at Lancaster but is too early for the old man's explorer ticket, I'll have to use one of my Delay Repay tickets and get a visit to Hodbarrow sorted.

The question was where to get off? If I got off at Arnside I'd have ten minutes to look at the estuary before getting the train back to Preston and beyond. If I got off at Ulverston or Dalton (depending on how the train was running) the next train back stops at Lancaster so I'd have to spend an hour at Leighton Moss. Up as far as Arnside was the plan at first but the rain eased enough for an hour at Leighton Moss to look to be the better option. And so it was.

The rain kept most birds under cover and even the gulls were grounded, black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs loafing on lampposts and rooves, lesser black-backs and herring gulls sitting on their own in fields away from carrion crows and jackdaws. There was a good count of woodpigeons, when they're fed up they have a tendency to sit on railway architecture watching the trains go by. 

The coastal pools at Leighton Moss were quietly busy. Mute swans and shelducks cruised, black-headed gulls loafed and there was much else there wasn't time to clock as we passed by. A distant big white blob on stilts was a sleeping spoonbill, a smaller  white blob moving a white stick in the air was a great white egret, the other white blobs were either or neither or mute swans.

It was high tide on Morecambe Bay. Carrion crows, shelducks and jackdaws mooched about the salt marshes and little egrets haunted the creeks. There were lots of eiders on the Leven, I'm baffled as to where they were earlier in the year. The train was on time so I got off at Dalton for the short wait for the train back to Silverdale, a red deer grazing by the line near Meathop being the only additional highlight on the way back.

Pochards, mallards and mute swans with cygnets

Arriving at Leighton Moss I headed straight for Lilian's Hide and, much to my surprise, I had it to myself. The little gulls have still been around, on and off, I saw no sign of them today. Every so often I'd get a rush of giddiness as one of the black-headed gulls looked different, they always turned out to be one of the second-calendar-year birds showing brown feathers on their wing coverts. The black-headed gulls were very noisy and I couldn't really see much calls for it unless something had happened just before my arrival. A few small chicks sat on the rafts with their parents. Over on the other side a mute swan pulled along a train of cygnets as it cruised over to where its mate was dozing with some mallards and a female pochard.

Black-headed gull 

A couple of drake gadwalls drifted about, as did a great crested grebe and a few coots. A bittern boomed from somewhere deep in the reeds over by the causeway. Over the other way a great black-back was on its nest on the osprey platform supervised by a cormorant. I'm surprised they countenance having the cormorants anywhere close but they do.

Swifts swarmed low over the water and swirled over the reedbeds and I'm really going to have to cut out this unconscious tendency for alliteration, it makes for a lot of editing. A female marsh harrier rose suddenly and gently out of the reeds and just as suddenly and gently disappeared back into them.

I checked the time, it was time I was off. Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, wrens and a Cetti's warbler sang as I passed through to the visitor centre. House sparrows and swallows fidgeted about at the station. It started pouring down again just as the train was pulling into the station.

I took a meandering route back home, milking the value out of the explorer ticket. Rishworth Reservoir looked very quiet as the train passed by. Wayoh Reservoir always looks quiet, I keep meaning to give it a visit to check it out. The fields by Jumbles Country Park were full of woodpigeons and rabbits.

I'd had a good day out despite the weather. I'd felt I needed to break out of the Mersey Valley after not really going far last week.

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.