Monday mosses

Juvenile yellow wagtail, Chat Moss

I thought I'd have another look round the Salford mosses, in the hopes of getting a better photo of that Channel wagtail if it's still around. I decided to take a different approach so I took the ten minute train ride to Irlam and walked from the station up Astley Road to Four Lanes End, thence through Little Woolden Moss to Glazebury.

Irlam Moss

First time I've walked up Irlam Moss this way. It's a nice walk but some of the pantechnicons steaming through had a strange idea of what "Not suitable for heavy vehicles" may mean.

Chiffchaffs and blackbirds were doing most of the singing at the beginning of the lane, with backing vocals from blackcaps and song thrushes. As the landscape opened up they gave way to robins, wrens and whitethroats. For the first time this year I bumped into a decent sized flock of swallows, feeding low over the fields of barley and around a couple of horse paddocks. A good dozen house martins joined in the fun.

Glancing up I noticed a couple of black headed gulls flying overhead. Then one of them called and I had a closer look to confirm they were a pair of adult Mediterranean gulls. They flew North, I wonder if that's the pair that sometimes roost at Pennington Flash.

Approaching the motorway there were half a dozen actual black-headed gulls in one of the fields, together with a couple of dozen lesser black-backs of all ages from first calendar year to full adult. A brown hare in the middle of the field studiously ignored them.

A bit further on a couple of tree sparrows joined a family of pied wagtails picking over the mowings at the corner of the lane. A little way ahead, just before Four Lanes End, a male yellow wagtail was feeding one of its youngsters. Another male yellow wagtail was calling noisily from the front lawn of Four Lane Ends Farm, imagine having that as a garden tick!

The thin woodland at the entrance to Little Woolden Moss was thick with the songs of willow warblers and whitethroats, with at least two families of willow warblers skittering around amongst the saplings. The clearings were heaving with meadow pipits, including at least seven males doing their parachute drop song display. A couple of reed buntings added to the songscape.

I generally don't have a lot of luck scanning the open water on the moss. Today was different: there were the usual half a dozen or so pied wagtails, and yet more meadow pipits, but also a couple of oystercatchers loafing in the company of a couple of black-headed gulls, an adult and a youngster. A little further along, near where the hide used to be, I noticed a bit of movement on the far side of the pool: an adult ringed plover with two well-grown juveniles. A couple of curlews could be mostly heard but not seen in the distance. A kestrel hovered over one of the pools; I've no idea what it was hunting, I can't imagine many voles or shrews venturing out onto the bare peat there. The one dragonfly of the day was a black darter that flew along the path then jinked off stage left and into the cotton grass.

The distant "Too dark to be a kestrel, too lightly built for a hobby and what's going on with all that tail?" bird was a female cuckoo quietly going about her business of upsetting meadow pipits.

If the quail's still in that field it was being very quiet about it. There had obviously been a mass emergence of small tortoiseshells, every thistle on the field boundaries had at least two jostling for the best flower heads. They were joined by a couple of large skippers and a handful of red admirals. I didn't have any luck with the Channel wagtail: there were four or five yellow wagtails dashing in and out of cover in the potato field just beyond the poly tunnels but I couldn't see any of them well enough to spot anything unusual. A small flock of linnets fed on the weed seedheads along the path.

Small tortoiseshell and large skipper, Little Woolden Moss

A pleasant walk down Moss Lane, with half a dozen sand martins over Glaze Brook and a similar number of house martins over the water treatment works.

I got the bus into Leigh, again waving goodbye to the 126 to the Trafford Centre as it left as we were arriving. I got the 34 into Worsley then had half an hour's mooching round the canal before getting the 68 to the Trafford Centre and thence home.