Mossland wander

Nice afternoon's walk through Chat Moss and Little Woolden Moss and thence through to Glazebury today.

First pleasant surprise was just ten minutes after crossing the motorway bridge from Irlam: a tree pipit flying into an oak tree by the path. Plenty of lapwings and yellowhammers along the way and hedgerows full of blackcaps and whitethroats. 

Chat Moss

Then my first visit to Little Woolden Moss, which is definitely a work in progress, with plenty of potential. 

Cotton grass, Little Woolden Moss

Walking away my eye was caught by something moving swiftly over one of the pools. It was a hobby catching damselflies. Cracking views but a beggar to try to photograph as it was quite close, fast moving and had a habit of flying into the sun. 

Hobby, Little Woolden Moss

I decided that rather than retracing my steps back through Chat Moss it would be easier to carry on down the path meeting Moss Lane and then on to Glazebury for a bus. I found a nice group of yellow wagtails when I turned the corner into a farm lane, which was reassuring.

Female yellow wagtail, Glazebury

A quiet day out

Went out for a walk across Marshside and Crossens. There had been reports of whinchat and curlew sandpiper at Marshside and I hoped to add them to the year list. (No luck there so I'll have to keep on trying.)

It was all relatively quiet: all the pink-footed geese, wigeon and teal had gone and there were just a few dozen black-tailed godwits. Odd to think that it was only this time last year a pair of glossy ibis spent a few days on the pool by Nels Hide and earlier the same month a snow goose had joined the pink-footed geese on Crossens.

Avocet, Marshside

The black-headed gulls and avocets were noisily busy on their nests at Marshside while the ducks and coots were kept busy trying to protects their young from marauding herring gulls. Crossens was a lot quieter, and drier: Crossens Outer Marsh was particularly parched and empty.

Drake gadwall, Marshside

On the way home, on a whim, I left the train at Wigan and decided to get the bus down to Pennington Flash for an evening visit. Unusually there were no terns of any kind on the Flash. A couple of common sandpipers chased each other about and an unseasonal drake wigeon was asleep in front of the Horrocks Hide. Elsewhere there was just the one little ringed plover, there were two or three the other week. The usual Cetti's warbler made itself known just across from the Edmondson Hide. Time was that a Cetti's was a highlight of a South Coast visit, these days nearly every decent sized bit of wetland in the North West has at least one resident singer.

Mute swan, Pennington Flash

Plenty of Canada goose goslings about, including a family that seemed to go out of its way to annoy one of the pairs of swans.

Up periscope

When this is the best view you're getting of that well known small secretive skulker the whooper swan you don't feel so bad about missing that small brown job that dived into a ditch full of brambles.

Whooper swan, Martin Mere

Etherow Country Park

Sketch map of Etherow Country Park

Etherow Country Park is a piece of wooded valley just outside Marple. A wide range of woodland species can be found here, including a good population of mandarin ducks.

River Etherow, Etherow Country Park

There is a 384 bus stop just by the entrance to the Country Park on Compstall Road and a 383 bus stop a little way further down across the road. The 384 runs from Stockport bus station via Romiley train station, the 383 runs from the bus station via Marple train station. During the day they're roughly every 15 minutes. Be careful crossing the road: traffic comes at speed down the steep hill!

If you're starting or ending your visit with a walk through Ernocroft Wood the bus stops for the 394 are just south of the entrance to the Country Park on Glossop Road. This bus goes from Glossop to Stepping Hill, and vice versa, once every two hours.

From Compstall Road, once you've negotiated your way through the car park and decided whether or not to have a cup of tea in the café it's a nice gentle stroll along the banks of the little canal that feeds the boating lake. You won't get very far before the first mandarin ducks show themselves.

Mandarin duck, Etherow Country Park

I cross the canal at the first bridge I come to, as much to avoid cars as to have a good look down to the River Etherow to see if I can spot any grey wagtails or dippers (the best place to see them is near the end of the walk as you approach the wooden bridge to the picnic area).

Dipper, Etherow Country Park

This path joins the road at the point where the river goes over a stepped weir. At this point you can either turn right for a walk through Ernoroft Wood or left for a walk around Keg Wood.

Weir, Etherow Country Park

Keg Wood

Keg Wood is a piece of ancient woodland that used to be managed for shooting. In Spring it's carpeted in bluebells and ramsons. You'll find all the usual woodland suspects. The Goyt Valley, a local stronghold for pied flycatchers, isn't far away so there's a chance you might strike lucky and find one here.

Bluebells, Keg Wood

A metalled track into Keg Wood starts by the house on the corner (please respect that this is somebody's home). As the track curves round behind the house you go through a gate into the wood and then meanders and undulates its way around to bring you back where you started. In this early stretch you can see the river through the trees on your right. 

Just after the first rollercoaster dip the track forks. The path to your right takes you down to Keg Pool and then, eventually, back here. I have a dodgy knee and find the slope here easier to walk up than down so I carry on along the main path. The pool is a decent-sized pond that usually hosts a few ducks, coots and dabchicks and good numbers of dragonflies and damselflies. The Egyptian goose that lived here for a dozen years was frightened by fireworks last year and taken into care. It turned out to be perfectly hale an hearty but can't be released because the people taking care of it don't have a licence for its release.

Keg Wood

There's a house within the wood (again, please respect that it's somebody's home), once you get past that the track gets a bit rougher. Every so often there are benches and there are a couple of wooden bus shelter affairs for when the weather turns temporarily nasty. The second one of these is by a picnic area in a glade called Sunny Corner. Once you pass this you do a big loop round and then down to Keg Pool.

Ernocroft Wood

Ernocroft Wood is a younger piece of woodland covering the east side of the river valley up to Glossop Road. It includes a lot more conifers, including a small, thickly-planted telegraph pole plantation.

Ernocroft Wood

A rough but serviceable track snakes its way up the slope without indulging in the insane undulations of Keg Wood. This leads to the entrance to the country park on Glossop Road. The bus stops are a few minutes' walk down the hill. Walking down the side with the pavement you get some good views across the valley and beyond. Mind how you go crossing the road, it can be quite busy.

Seeing black

The original plan for today was to go over to Crosby to see if the black terns were still on Seaforth Nature Reserve. Then I noticed that a dozen were reported from Pennington Flash this morning. As this is £16.50 cheaper, the weather looked dodgy and the journey doesn't involve Northern trains I decided to go there instead. (There are excellent birdwatching reasons for visiting Crosby when the weather's not lousy.)

I arrived at lunchtime just in time for the heavens to open. The good thing about the hissing rain is that it persuaded the black terns not to fly off. I counted thirteen, another guy reckoned twenty and I gave up when the light got so bad I wasn't sure if I was watching swifts or swallows hawking over the flash.

Distant black terns in lousy light

As a consolation prize a nice common sandpiper landed and sheltered in front of the Horrocks Hide.

Common sandpiper

Later on in the afternoon the weather cleared up and lucky tea time visitors could see thirteen black terns in bright sunshine.

The North Wirral: Leasowe to Meols

Sketch map: Meols, Moreton and Leasowe
(click to enlarge)

This stretch of the Wirral coast is well-served by public transport: the trains are every quarter of an hour and there are plenty of buses from elsewhere in Merseyside. It's well worth the visit for the walks just by themselves. From a birding perspective the mixture of grassy coastline, horse paddocks, little bits of thin woodland and a reed-fringed pond provides a variety of habitats to explore, particularly during Spring and Autumn when this area can be very busy with passage migrants.

Depending on what else I've got planned for the day I'll usually start from Leasowe Station or Moreton Station. From Leasowe Station you can join the Wirral Circular Trail about fifty yards down the road, just after the Premier Foods factory. From Moreton Station you join it about a hundred yards down the road at the entrance to Kerr's Field. (If you prefer you can walk down to the end of the road to get yourself a cup of tea and a chip butty). In Spring and Summer you'll usually see whitethroat as you walk along the stream (The Birket).

Kerr's Field is a paddock area by the stream that's often good for passage migrants. It's possible to see good numbers of wheatears, yellow wagtails and pied wagtails (a possible Iberian wagtail was reported from here recently).

Yellow wagtail, Kerr's Field

Wheatear, Kerr's Field

Juvenile stonechat, Kerr's Field

Of course, timing is everything when it comes to passage migration: a couple of weeks after seeing dozens of wagtails and wheatears here I came back and found just the one wheatear. Any disappointment I may have had soon evaporated when I noticed the resident stonechats had a few new mouths to feed.

In Spring a walk along the path past the lighthouse will be accompanied by the songs of warblers — mostly blackcaps and chiffchaffs, with one or two sedge warblers — and skylarks with the occasional "cronk" from a passing raven.

Leasowe Lighthouse

At the lighthouse you have the choice of going up for a walk along the sea wall for a bit of seawatching, directly following the path through Leasowe Common that eventually gets to Meols, or taking a diversion to the left and following the path into the reeds and trees and round the other side of the pond to add reed and willow warblers to the tally (this path rejoins the path a few hundred yards further along).

Leasowe Common

This spit of rocks is about halfway between Leasowe Lighthouse and Meols.
Most of the waders taking refuge here will usually be oystercatchers, redshanks and dunlin but you never know your luck.

Coming into Meols

Coming into Meols you can walk through the caravan park to join Park Lane and walk down to the station from there or you can carry on along the sea front then turn down Dovepoint Road and down to the station.

First-Winter pied wheatear, Meols sea wall, November 2018

If you've the energy you can carry on walking along the sea front down to Hoylake and thence to West Kirby.

My local patch

I spent an hour this afternoon pottering round my local patch dodging rain showers. This is one of those bits of "waste ground" you find in odd corners that aren't viable for development. In this case it's roughly ten acres of land which was on the wrong side of a freight line when most of what we used to call "cornfields" were built over for warehouses and metal bashing. Although it's ten acres it wouldn't be worth the expense of putting in the usual services: at it's widest it's about twenty yards wide, at its narrowest less than three and it has a public footpath running down the middle of it.

Back in the sixties when we first moved here the fields supported hares, lapwings and grey partridge but what's left of it these days is a patch of scrub: bramble patches and swathes of rosebay willowherb, golden rod and Michaelmas daisies punctuated by hawthorns, sycamores and hazels.

Barton Clough.
The Lombardy poplars line the public footpath alongside Lostock Park

Barton Clough
The dog walkers' rough path through the willowherbs

The animal life is unspectacular but the importance of patches like this isn't the number or variety, they're oases dotted about the urban development. Having said that, I've seen 55 species of bird here so far including flyovers (these are listed at the end).

In Summer this area supports a few pairs of warblers — whitethroat, blackcap and chiffchaff — together with finches, tits, robins and wrens. There are good numbers of wood pigeons and blackbirds. For some reason chaffinches are only a Winter visitor round here. In Autumn large flocks of goldfinches descend on the thistles and golden rod. Dozens of blackbirds and redwings spend the Winter here and this is the best time to be able to see great spotted woodpeckers in the copse by the school. Once in a while there'll be a nice surprise like a whinchat stopping by to refuel on migration or an overflying yellow-legged gull.

For the past couple of years there's been a resident buzzard, though it's been seen a lot less frequently this year, perhaps because of competition from the pair that have territory over near the Trafford Centre. Or it could be that the workings for the new tram line to the Trafford Centre are providing rich pickings in disturbed small wildlife, which might explain why the local kestrels aren't around so often either. This is also part of the hunting territory for a pair of sparrowhawks which seems to stretch from here down to the River Mersey.

Buzzard, Barton Clough

I'd been worrying about the lack of whitethroats but today there were two pairs and a third singing male. Two pairs bred last year. This very obliging chap is the male of the pair that seem to have taken over the elderberry bushes by the old rail line.

Common whitethroat, Barton Clough

Just the one each of chiffchaff and blackcap singing, which is half the usual strength, but they've been around a while so the others could be busy. A nice surprise was the appearance of a male lesser whitethroat which disappeared into the brambles as soon as it noticed my camera then promptly yelled out a burst of song just to reassure me I hadn't imagined it. No sign of the buzzard or the kestrel today; haven't seen the kestrel for a few weeks but the buzzard drifted high over the other day.

Site List

Black-headed Gull *
Blackbird
Blackcap
Blue Tit
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Carrion Crow
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Coal Tit
Collared Dove
Common Gull *
Cormorant *
Dunnock
Feral Pigeon
Fieldfare
Goldcrest
Goldfinch
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Greenfinch
Grey Heron *
Grey Wagtail *
Herring Gull *
House Sparrow
Jackdaw
Jay
Kestrel
Lesser Black-backed Gull *
Lesser Whitethroat
Long-tailed Tit
Magpie
Mediterranean Gull *
Mistle Thrush
Nuthatch
Pied Wagtail
Pink-footed Goose *
Redwing
Robin
Rook
Skylark *
Snipe *
Song Thrush
Sparrowhawk
Starling
Stock Dove *
Swallow *
Swift *
Treecreeper
Whinchat
Whitethroat
Willow Warbler
Woodpigeon
Wren
Yellow-legged Gull *

* Flyover sighting