Etherow Country Park

Dipper

Had a few hours' strolling round Etherow Country Park and Keg Wood while the weather was behaving itself. Despite the recent heavy rain the water was normal though muddy and the ground underfoot was only lightly damp. Plenty of people about but Keg Wood was fairly quiet.

All the usual suspects were at the car park — Canada geese, farm gees, mallards, coots, pigeons and black-headed gulls. A few juvenile black-headed gulls were testament to success at one or other of the local breeding grounds. Walking down the path there were some very young mallard ducklings, nesting coots and a couple of young moorhens. I noticed we're back down to the two Muscovy ducks. A few robins, wrens and blackbirds sang along the little canal and chiffchaffs and chaffinches sang from the high treetops.

As I crossed the bridge I met the first mandarin ducks of the day: a bunch of well-grown juveniles, females and a couple of drakes already coming into eclipse plumage.In fact, all day there were only a couple of drakes still in full breeding finery.

Drake mandarin

I was hoping to be able to add dipper to the year list as I scanned the river. A family of grey wagtails including a couple of noisy youngsters were a nice consolation prize. I walked up to the weir and had a look round but the only bird there was a mallard. By chance as I turned I glanced downriver and noticed a grey shape bob up onto one of the rocks. A very nice juvenile dipper. I'd no sooner spotted it than it flew off downstream.

Horsetails by a small stream, Keg Wood

Keg Wood was mostly quiet of people but noisy of birds, though the sounds of kids playing by the Keg Pool echoed around every so often. Most of the birdsong came from wrens and chiffchaffs, supported by blackbirds, robins and blackcaps. A singing goldcrest was insistent but nearly impossible to see as it kept to the cover of the darker corners of a larch tree. High up a couple of young nuthatches were dogging the heels of their parents, stopping every so often to beg from the ends of bare branches (not for the first time I wondered why I've never seen a sparrowhawk here). Small families of blue tits flitted through the willows by the clearings but great tits were curiously absent, it feels a bit early for them to be disappearing into post-breeding moult though they seem to have done the same at home, too.

Hearing, but not seeing, a treecreeper by the "bus shelter" at Sunny Corner I decided to sit awhile and wait for it to turn up. After a couple of minutes it obligingly flew to the base of the tree directly opposite across the clearing and worked its way up the trunk before being disturbed by a grey squirrel. This being the closest thing to a hide in the wood I stayed for ten minutes to see what else might turn up. A couple of magpies, a jay, one of the blue tit families, a couple of wrens. I was hoping that there might still be a pied flycatcher or two about but it wasn't to be today.

Walking back, I had another look downriver from the weir. The male grey wagtail was busy collecting insects beside one of the eddying pools in the rapids. I walked down over the scary wooden bridge where the canal overflow forms its waterfalls and looked back. An adult dipper bobbed up from behind a rock and decided to stay awhile to preen and get a breather.

Dipper

Dipper

There were a few more mallard families along the little canal, the ducklings mostly well-grown but a few youngsters amongst them.

Mallard duckling

A nice walk and I got the bus home well before it started raining again.