Stretford

Stretford Meadows

An afternoon stroll around Stretford Meadows and Stretford Ees, the weather started overcast and muggy then cleared and brightened up. Chiffchaffs, blackcaps, wrens and a couple of willow warblers sang in the trees. Out in the open areas whitethroats and reed buntings sang from the scrub and bushes. On the East side, approaching Kickety Brook, a few rattling snatches of song from a lesser whitethroat could be heard struggling to compete with the whitethroats in the hawthorns and the sound of the traffic on the motorway. I couldn't find it, it was somewhere in a clump of elder bushes behind the hawthorns.

I was struck again by the absence of skylarks along our stretch of the Mersey Valley. When I was a kid there were always skylarks singing over the field behind the school (the remnants of which are my local birdwatching patch) and even the field next to Old Trafford Cricket Ground which was used as a football pitch by the grammar school had a pair. These days nothing,

There's a large element of luck in this birdwatching lark. If I hadn't glanced over the motorway and wondered why that distant plane looked a bit funny I wouldn't have spotted the buzzard flying over towards Urmston Meadows. And if I hadn't had a look round asking myself why there weren't any swallows I wouldn't have spotted the raven flying overhead.