Marbury and the flashes

Goldcrest, Marbury Country Park 

It was a cool, grey morning with a biting wind. I'd decided it was high time I went for a wander round Marbury Country Park and the Northwich flashes. Oddly, I found an early report of a couple of black-necked stilts on Ashton's Flash a bit off-putting, which is ridiculous, they're lovely birds to see. I stuck to the plan, noticing along the way that the reports of the birds were jumping between the flashes and Budworth Mere. Whatever. I was going for my walk and it might or might not involve stilts.

The choice, as always was to get the Chester train to Northwich and walk up or the 9a bus from Warrington straight to the entrance to Marbury Country Park. Trains and buses being as they are, there's a fifty minute wait for the 9a in Warrington but it's a simpler and more reliable connection for me than trying to get the Chester train and I can hit the ground running, so that's what I chose.

I got off the bus at Marbury Hall Nurseries and had a quick glance over the road at Kennel Wood where the woodpigeons and jackdaws were flying around and blackbirds, chiffchaffs, willow warblers and robins sang.

Marbury Country Park 

There was more of the same as I entered the country park and walked through the arboretum to Budworth Mere. Blackcaps, robins and wrens predominated but had plenty of competition from chiffchaffs, blackbirds and nuthatches. Blue tits and goldcrests quietly sang to themselves in the trees, great tits scolded passersby and dunnocks silently skittered around under bushes. It was a tad busy.

Dunnock

Budworth Mere 

It was damned cold by Budworth Mere, the wind was Skegness bracing. This didn't stop a reed warbler singing in the reeds, nor any of the other warblers singing in the trees by the mere. Tufted ducks, coots and mallards cruised about, great crested grebes dozed in small groups and a kingfisher shot across the water into the trees on the opposite bank. Midway across the opposite bank Canada geese and greylags loafed in the company of a bunch of lesser black-backs and a couple of shelducks. A few black-headed gulls flew about and a common tern fished just offshore.

Mallards

Tufted duck on a choppy mere

Bluebells,  Wood 

I wandered on and into Big Wood as the sun started to flirt with the idea of making a sustained appearance. The birdsong continued with song thrushes, chaffinches, goldfinches and greenfinches joining the chorus. A treecreeper kept coming down to the path to collect nesting materials, zipping off every time the camera got it in focus. I gave up after a couple of minutes, I was too close to the nest for both our comfort.

Bluebells and windflowers

A chap told me to look out for a green woodpecker in the field on the other side of Big Wood and I thanked him greatly. We don't get a lot of green woodpeckers round our way and I've yet to get one on the year list. I turned and headed for the field, past carpets of bluebells and a mistle thrush singing in the trees.

Blackcap

Marbury Country Park 

A whitethroat sang in a hawthorn bush as I reached the path that runs between the wood and the field and  I started scanning round. I kept finding the same woodpigeons, mistle thrush and magpie. I know from experience that though green woodpeckers are big and bright lime green with red splashes about the face they can be surprisingly inconspicuous when they're pillaging ants' nests so I kept looking. Walking down a bit there were carrion crows and rabbits, then a song thrush bounced through the patches of sedge in a field of rough pasture, and then a couple of blackbirds. Then I heard a green woodpecker. The yaffling call was coming from round the corner, stage left. I walked round and scanned that corner of the field. Another magpie. The yaffling resumed, this time from the trees I'd just left behind. I gave it another couple of goes and packed in trying to see the beggar. A call counts for the year list.

Heading for Marbury Lane 

I crossed the canal and walked down onto Marbury Lane. The songscape continued unabated in the trees. A pair of mallards supervised their ducklings from a distance on one of the little ponds, the adults in one corner and the ducklings in another. 

By Marbury Lane 

The sun came out in earnest and all the blackbirds singing in the hedgerows kicked the volume up several notches. Speckled woods, orange tips and brimstones started to flutter along the hedgerows and grassy verges. I noticed some stock doves in a field by the lane. I don't often get the chance to take photos of stock doves close up except at Pennington Flash, here was an opportunity to get some more. One posed obligingly, the sun catching the iridescent green and purple patch on its neck. The camera battery said no, and I'd left the spare battery at home. On the plus side this surely guaranteed I'd get cracking views of the stilts.

Ashton's Flash 

The stilts had been on Ashton's Flash all afternoon so I headed straight there. I walked up to the viewpoint and had a look round. There were mallards, Canada geese, greylags and coots on the pool in the centre of the flash. A bit more searching found some shelducks, teal and moorhens. Half a dozen lesser black-backs stood aloof from half a dozen herring gulls and a handful of black-headed gulls steered clear of both. Reed buntings and reed warblers sang in the reedy scrub and lapwings chased jackdaws off the flash, temporarily. No sign of stilts. There was a group of birdwatchers on the bund between Neumann's Flash and Ashton's Flash and it looked like they had the shallow scrape in the corner in their sights so I walked round.

Ashton's Flash 

"Any luck?" I asked a birdwatcher I'd let onto earlier. He smiled and nodded at the scrape. Mallards, lapwings, oystercatchers… and there in plain sight not fifty yards away a pair of black-necked stilts. They are very lovely birds to see. Even if your camera battery's flat.

Neumann's Flash 

I went over and had a look at Neumann's Flash, tiptoeing past mallard ducklings on the path to the hide. It was quiet on the flash, perhaps a dozen tufted ducks, a handful of grebes dozing in the distance, a pair of shelducks and a few lesser black-backs having a wash in the corner by the bund. Oh, and a reed warbler singing its heart out just in front of the hide.

Gorse

Checking the buses I found I'd just missed the number 9 back to Warrington so I'd have to walk through to the bus interchange in Northwich to get the 9a which was due in half an hour. This was when I realised I'd never got the 9a back to Warrington and didn't know the way to the interchange. Looking it up I found the quickest way was a path through Carey Park which turned out to be a lot more pleasant than walking down Old Warrington Road as I usually do, and it got me into the town centre a lot quicker and easier, too. I must remember this next time.

I didn't have long to wait for the bus. All day it had struck me that I hadn't seen a single hirundine flying about. As the bus wound its way through Antrobus the natural order of things reasserted itself as an angry swallow chased a jackdaw across the road.

Birchwood

Birchwood Forest Park 

I wasn't feeling my brightest and bounciest best, not that I have a brightest and bounciest best but one should show willing. I had no firm plans, or even vague plans, for the day and despite its being a sunny morning I couldn't shake off the lethargy and get out and do something. As a displacement I spent two hours submitting a response to a government consultation, almost certainly a dead waste of time as given the nature of these things everything's been done and dusted and any are you really sure this isn't a tad unwise? questions will be deftly swept under the carpet. I'd hoped that might have prompted an energetic reaction but it wasn't happening. I put my boots on and went to get the train to see where I went. One of the advantages of not having ticket facilities at the station is that you don't have to commit to going anywhere until the guard sells you a ticket on the train.

Birchwood Forest Park is the thin band of woodland acting as a buffer between the housing estate and the railway line by Birchwood Station. I've not stopped and had a proper look round for a bit, it's a nice hour's slow dawdle, this time of year it has the usual complement of suburban singers, I needed a bit of exercise, so I got off the train at and walked round the corner into the park.

Robins, blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang along the roadside. They were joined by blackcaps, wrens and a song thrush as I walked along. Great tits churred and squeaked as I passed, a couple of robins ticked quietly from the depths of holly bushes, blue tits were in ninja mode, only spotted when breaking cover between trees. A lot of the trees were barely breaking bud but I was already struggling to spot small birds that didn't want to be seen. A couple of goldfinches twittered past overhead, more were silhouettes quietly picking insects from the emergent leaves at the tops of ash trees. A great spotted woodpecker made itself known before vanishing into a sycamore.

Spanish bluebells

I decided I wasn't going to walk round for time gentlemen please at Ridley Moss. I had a bit of an explore of the little side paths between the park and the housing estate, picking my way through cow parsley and Spanish bluebells and stepping over fallen trees. All the while watched by robins, magpies and titmice or startled by woodpigeons suddenly erupting from hawthorn bushes.

Wandering back a coal tit added its squeaky toy call to the soundscape and a couple of woodpigeons started singing. 

A blackcap sang over the piped music as I waited for the train back. I felt the better for stretching my legs and getting a bit of sunshine filtered through green leaves. I decided against stopping off along the way for another walk. The dark grey, yellowing clouds that suddenly rolled in confirmed I'd made a sound choice.

Home thoughts

The spadgers are in quiet mode, which is a good sign that there are nests with eggs. It's not often I see more than one in the garden, and most of the time I'm not even seeing that. Once the eggs hatch and there are mouths to feed the sycamores and fruit bushes will be busy with spadgers collecting aphids to feed them and coming to the feeders regularly to get something for themselves. The hens are in and out to the feeders without breaking cover as they snatch a very quick bite before resuming incubation. The cocks are hardly in at all, a couple of the older lads coming along to check everything out for a few minutes. Which reminds me, I must refill the bird baths.

The singers aren't in quiet mode. The blackbird kicks in at four and is joined an hour later by the robin. That's usually my cue to finally doze off. The collared doves, woodpigeons, blackcap, wren and dunnock tend to start singing nearer six o'clock. During the day both the blackbird and the robin are quiet most of the time but have half-hour sessions of almost continuous song around ten, two and six, with occasional apparently random cameo appearances. The other singers, particularly the wren and the dunnock, lean towards random cameos throughout the day. The great tit doesn't get involved in the dawn chorus and just goes for cameos. The extreme form of this is the mistel thrush, which seems to have a huge territory about a mile square. He'll sing in the trees on the embankment or by the school playing field about once a week. We're marginal territory, the core of his activity is the park and the trees by the warehouse next to it. Some years we will be in the centre of a mistle thrush territory, with the birds nesting in the older, bigger trees down the road, but this isn't one of those years.

Elton Reservoir

Elton Reservoir 

I was determined to have a lazy day, get some reading and writing done, make serious inroads on the stocks of tea, that sort of thing. But reports of black terns at Elton Reservoir made me fidgety. Black terns, like little gulls, are capricious and highly mobile Spring passage migrants, they may linger for days or they may be gone in a blink of an eye, you go to see them the first chance you get or you might not get another this year. So I headed over to try my luck.

Daisyfield Greenway
The old Bury to Bolton railway line.

I got off the 471 at Buckingham Drive, walked through the housing estate and cut over the Daisyfield Greenway onto the meadows by the reservoir. Blackbirds, willow warblers, robins and wrens sang in the trees as I passed by.

Elton Reservoir 

Some of the usual gang of mute swans, Canada geese, mallards and coots loafed about near the sailing club, half a dozen pure white fancy pigeons tidied up after a feeding the ducks session. There were a few dozen black-headed gulls out on the water making plenty of noise. Most of them were second calendar year birds moulting into their brown hoods but keeping their juvenile brown scapular feathers on their wings. It took a while to see any black terns, they were out in midwater over near the farmhouse. I reckoned I'd get a better view of them from the other side.

Lesser black-backs and black tern

I walked round onto the Southern edge of the reservoir. I was getting better views of the black terns, four of them, but they were still distant. Every so often they would disappear and I'd eventually find them as black dots sitting on top of buoys. They never lingered long, they spent most of their time feeding on insects over the water, fidgeting and jinking as they chased their prey.

Black tern

An oystercatcher called loudly as it flew low over to the fields beyond. Besides the terns and black-headed gulls on the reservoir there was a small raft of lesser black-backs, a couple of pairs of great crested grebes and a score of mallards. For once I couldn't see any tufted ducks about. Instead of the crowds of sand martins I saw last time there was just a handful of them and a couple of swallows. 

Bury and Bolton Canal 

I walked down from the reservoir to the canal, blackbirds, chiffchaffs and willow warblers singing all the way. As I crossed the canal three goosanders flew low over the bridge and headed into Radcliffe. For once I remembered to take the path under the tram bridge and was rewarded by a grey wagtail skittering about the riverbank.

River Irwell at Warth Bridge 

The 513 to Farnworth was due at the stop on Warth Bridge before the 513 to Bury, which suited me fine. I got off in Kearsley and got the 20 back to the Trafford Centre and thence home. I didn't feel like dealing with a sunny Saturday teatime in the city centre.

Flixton

Sand martins, Irlam Locks

It was another splendidly sunny day, I was feeling a bit low energy and a bad night's sleep and the pollen counts vied for my attention but I didn't want to waste the weather. I decided I'd get the train into town and go out for a gentle dawdle somewhere, probably getting the train to Hadfield and pottering up a bit of the Longendale Trail or some such. I looked at the crowd lining the platform at Oxford Road waiting for the train into Piccadilly, I looked at the departure boards, I asked myself if I really wanted the experience of a warm, busy Friday afternoon Piccadilly Station waiting for uncertain trains and the answer was: Good God No!

So I got back on the train I came in on, got off at Flixton and had a walk round Wellacre Country Park.

I stopped to have a look at the Mersey at Flixton Bridge. Last time it was a dipper and a pair of gadwalls, today it was a grey wagtail and two drake mallards. Sometimes there's nothing, I quite enjoy the unpredictability of the game.

River Mersey, Flixton Bridge 

Blackbirds, chiffchaffs and robins sang by the riverside; blue tits, great tits, house sparrows and goldfinches fidgeted about, woodpigeons clattered around as they disbudded hawthorns and jackdaws commuted between the fields on the other side of the river and their nests over in Town's Gate. I walked through onto the path up Green Hill and blackcaps, wrens and whitethroats joined the songscape. 

Green Hill

Green Hill 

Peacocks, orange tips and small whites peppered the open slopes while speckled woods, holly blues and large whites fluttered about the wooded areas at the base of the hill. Every hawthorn bush had its cloud of St. Mark's flies to walk through, every bramble patch its whitethroat ready to scold passersby.

Walking back down through the trees and listening to the churring of blue tits and great tits as I passed and the tutting of long-tailed tits impatient for me to be on my way, I worried I haven't seen or heard willow tits here for a long while. I hope they've not been pushed out by the competition.

Peacock

I passed under the railway bridge, tiptoed around the sunbathing peacock butterflies and had a quick nosy at Dutton's Pond. A mallard duck was being bothered by two drakes, I'd spend the next hour watching her fly from place to place across the country park with them in hot pursuit. There's nothing courtly and gentle about mallard courtship. The coots and moorhens were muttering unseen from the flag irises.

Dutton's Pond 

The songscape resumed as I walked by the railway embankment to Jack Lane. A long-tailed tit bounced by with a huge beakful of insects and it stopped to pick off a few more aphids from a willow twig.

Walking to Jack Lane 

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

I could hear two reed warblers singing as I approached the path across Jack Lane Nature Reserve, one either side in the reeds. As I stepped over the gateway a third piped up over at the far end by Jack Lane. Then a sedge warbler started singing from the brambles at the side over towards the railway. For a couple of minutes it was bewildering as the four birds jammed scratchy improvisational songs, the sedge warbler slightly harsher and given to suddenly riffing off at an angle to the tune, the reed warblers keeping to the structure of the song throughout. They went quiet as I started walking along then the reed warbler next to the path decided I wasn't anything and resumed singing. For once I got a visual on the water rail as it squealed nearby, albeit just the wobbling of reeds as it passed through. It's a while since I've heard a Cetti's warbler here, it was good to hear one today.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve
No dragonflies yet.

I walked down to Town's Gate and walked down Irlam Road to the locks to have a quick look round before getting the bus home. The swallows had arrived and joined the sand martins on the telegraph lines. While the martins are nesting on the locks the swallows will be nesting in the nearby stables.

Swallows and sand martins

The sand martins were mostly prettying up, skimming the top of the water on the canal before coming to the wires to preen.

Sand martin

Sand martins

Sand martin

Sand martin

Sand martins, wet and dry

The great crested grebes were all downstream of the lock today, as were the cormorants. A pied wagtail bounced about the downstream lock gates, a grey wagtail the upstream. There were just the two common terns today, making enough noise for a regiment. There weren't many black-headed gulls and they were letting the magpies have sole rights to the filtration pans on the water treatment works.

I wandered back down Irlam Road and struck dead lucky with the bus home waiting for me at the stop. Back home a teapot was singing my name.

Urban birdwatching

Boggart Hole Clough 

When I'm going through Manchester City Centre I always keep one eye on the Gothic rooftops for black redstarts. There's a tiny breeding population up there and once every seven years or so I actually spot one. Today was not one of those days.

I was in Rochdale for lunch with a friend. Had Rochdale and I not had history I'd be quite taken with the town centre, even so I was impressed by the new approach to the Town Hall. I'd seen a post on Facebook about the Town Hall peregrines coming back so I had a good look round. A pigeon's leg on the pavement suggested a peregrine had been around but I couldn't see any evidence of anything other than pigeons or woodpigeons having sat on the clock tower since it was spruced up. There was a background chorus from the trees on the slopes down from St Chads, a blackcap being the most persistent of the singers, with lusty support from robins, wrens, blackbirds and a song thrush. A nosy on the river found a pair of mallards by the bus station and a lone Canada goose further downstream.

Rochdale Town Centre 

After lunch I decided I would play bus station bingo and see where I went. The 17 was first bus out so I got that. I didn't want a canalside walk in Castleton or a walk round Alkrington Woods today, I felt like having a bits and pieces sort of an afternoon. It was only after the bus had passed the stop I remembered Boarshaw Clough was just off Rochdale Road. I did, however, remember to get off at the entrance to Boggart Hole Clough.

Boggart Hole Clough 

Robins, blackcaps and great tits were singing in the trees by the entrance. Blue tits and wrens joined in as I walked through, then chiffchaffs and willow warblers, blackbirds, song thrushes and nuthatches. Somewhere a few dozen layers of treetops beyond a family of young carrion crows were demanding a feed. Magpies scuttled about, woodpigeons barged about in the canopy, dunnocks and long-tailed tits popped up onto twigs and disappeared just as quickly. I passed under a stand of larches on a bend and found a goldcrest foraging in the twigs just above my head.

Large white

There were lots of butterflies enjoying the sunshine. Large whites, orange tips and green-veined whites fluttered about the path verges, commas basked on paths and speckled woods patrolled the woodland margins. The difference a couple of weeks and a bit of sunshine can make.

Comma

Instead of following Boggart Hole Brook to the boating lake as usual I decided to walk up the path running Northeast alongside another little brook. There were lots more titmice, warblers, butterflies and crows, the squirrels were a bit more conspicuous and a couple of ring-necked parakeets screeched in the treetops. And it was altogether a very pleasant walk.

I played bus stop bingo at Grange Park Road. The 149 to Oldham came first so I got it and went to have a look at Alexandra Park to see how the herons were getting on.

As I waited to cross Kings Road I had plenty of time to listen to the willow warblers, robins, dunnocks and wrens singing by the roadside (it's one of those roads that has a line of traffic coming one way and nothing the other and you have to time your crossing for when they flip over). Town centre willow warblers always surprise me.

Alexandra Park, Oldham

There were more in the park, together with blackcaps, goldfinches and great tits. The heron's nest in the tree in the middle of the boating lake had three nestlings too big to fit the nest.

Heron nestlings

Heron nestlings

Heron nestlings

The park was very busy so I only had a bit of a wander round and headed to Primrose Bank for the bus back to Manchester. (Primrose Bank is as well-named as Flowery Field, by the way.) The 79 turned up first and as it wended its way through Limeside a voice in the back of my head suggested I could get off and walk down to Crime Lake and Daisy Nook. Enough is as good as a feast, I stayed on the bus and went off home.

Leighton Moss

Avocets

I was extremely overdue a walk down to the coastal hides at Leighton Moss so I thought I'd take advantage of a fine Spring day to do so. The lesser yellowlegs that had been reported earlier in the week had moved on so there was no pressure, I was just going to see what I was going to see.

There was a thin smattering of woodpigeons, blackbirds and corvids along the line as the Barrow train went on its way. I stayed on until Ulverston to have a look on the estuaries, but mostly because I somehow still don't have eider on the year list. Much to my relief, half a dozen of them were loafing on a mudbank by the viaduct as the train passed over the Leven. Otherwise it was rather quiet, a handful of redshanks and a few black-headed gulls. Along the way the little egrets peppered about wet fields and saltmarshes were balanced by the empty beaches abandoned by gulls busy on their breeding patches.

Blue tit

The gulls don't seem to be breeding on Ulverston Station this year though there were plenty kicking about. The lesser black-backs outnumbered the herring gulls five to one. Blue tits fidgeted in the trees by the platform.

On the way back to Silverdale I noticed there was activity amongst the little egrets on the heronry (egretry?) at Meathop.

Heading for the coastal hides

The walk down from the station to the coastal hides was accompanied by a varied selection of bird song. Blackcaps, chiffchaffs, wrens, willow warblers, chaffinches and song thrushes sang in the trees, Cetti's warblers sang from the rank vegetation in the land drains, reed warblers from the reeds and flags in the larger drains, and a couple of skylarks sang above the fields.

Greylag

Gaggles of greylags grazed the fields in the company of jackdaws and carrion crows. There's no good reason why the hooded crow that had been around at the beginning of the year should make a comeback especially for me but I checked around for it anyway, just in case. A pair of cock pheasants decided to have a stand-off and punch-up by the roadside as I passed.

Pheasants

Heading for the coastal hides from the car park 

The black-headed gulls colony on the pools by the coastal hides could be heard from the car park. Chiffchaffs, blackcaps and willow warblers sang in the trees by the car park, whitethroats and Cetti's warblers joining in as I walked through the open reedy scrub. I had to tiptoe past the peacock butterflies sunning themselves on the path. Dabchicks hinneyed loudly from the reedbeds on the other side of the railway tracks.

Black-headed gulls and oystercatcher

I went to the Allen Hide first. The avocets on the pool tried, and failed, to compete with the black-headed gulls for noise. Some of the gulls were sitting on nests, there were a lot of courting couples and they were all squabbling like mad. The avocets were mostly paired up but were spending their time feeding, when they weren't picking fights with other passing avocets.

Avocets

Avocets

Avocets

Avocet

Avocet

Pochard

A couple of pairs of pochards and a pair of shovelers kept to the bank margins away from the crowds.

Black-tailed godwits, black-headed gull and avocet

There weren't so many black-headed gulls and avocets on the pool in front of the Eric Morecambe Hide. There were masses of roosting black-tailed godwits. A band of them on the pool stood out immediately, it took binoculars to appreciate the crowds covering the marsh like the icing on a cake. There was at least one bar-tailed godwit in the crowd on the pool. 

Black-tailed godwits

Black-headed gulls and redshanks

Redshank

Redshanks pottered about, shrimping and fly-catching in the pool. A couple of spotted redshanks kept to themselves in a far corner. Oystercatchers and shelducks loafed on the marsh, a party of shelducks flew in and started courting on a far pool. I took far too long making sure that it was the silhouette of a red-breasted merganser cruising round the pool, it was lying so low in the water it looked half its real size. Half a dozen wigeon grazed by the fence at the side, almost hidden in the grass. There were a few mute swans on the pools further out, I almost took the spoonbill further along for another one until it got up for a walk.

Walking back to the road half a dozen sand martins twittered about the telegraph lines.

There were more sand martins on the way back to the station and a couple of swallows passed low over the fields. In the mid distance I saw a couple of female marsh harriers floating over the reedbeds of Leighton Moss, and a couple of lapwings taking exception to them. Blackbirds, goldfinches and dunnocks joined the already rich songscape along the roadside.

Black-headed gull

I had an hour and a bit to wait for the through train to Manchester so I had a potter about Leighton Moss. I spent most of the time at Lilian's Hide watching the black-headed gulls on their nests, though the grass on the rafts was high enough to almost hide them. A few tufted ducks, pochards and gadwalls cruised about on the pool. Possibly the same couple of female marsh harriers skimmed the tops of the reedbeds in the distance. A cloud of sand martins hawked high above the pool.

I wandered down as far as the corner of the reedbed, hoping I might bump into a marsh tit. Other titmice quietly went about their business in the depths of the willows but I couldn't find any marsh tits. 

Cowslips

I called it quits as it was time to head for the train. This one was the last train with an almost reasonable connection home, the choice between a twenty minute wait for a bus or forty minutes for the train. It had been an excellent day out, I didn't want to end it playing Robinson Crusoe in Manchester.