Thundery mosses

Cotton grass, Little Woolden Moss

They've been promising thunderstorms for the past few days and nothing's happened, so I decided to have that walk across Chat Moss. And you'll never guess what happened. Luckily, although the thunder rolled in when I arrived at Little Woolden Moss the rain held off until I was two hundred yards from the bus stop on Warrington Road. Mind you, when it did come it was a deluge!

I got off the 100 bus from the Trafford Centre at the bottom of Cutnook Lane. A pair of buzzards were being harassed by a carrion crow. Once it had chased them over the motorway it decided its job was done and it went back to the football pitch.

It was one of those heavy, humid days which seem to encourage birds to sing. The most numerous warblers along Cutnook Lane were willow warblers. Blackcaps and chiffchaffs made up the weight and there was a single whitethroat in the horse paddock. I heard a willow tit-like chirring but couldn't find the source; a few yards down I bumped into a family of great tits and I concluded it was probably one of them. A pheasant was calling from one of the open fields and I was surprised to hear a peacock (I think it must be kept by the farm halfway along Twelve Yards Road). I wouldn't have noticed the nest of kestrels if the youngsters had kept quiet, they shut up when the female came back to them.

There were plenty of whitethroats along Twelve Yards Road. A family of blue tits foraged in the hawthorns. The kestrel reappeared and a few minutes later a flock of 50+ lapwings rose up a couple of fields down. My first common darters of the Summer patrolled the ditches and field margins. Another pair of buzzards, another harassing carrion crow.

Lapwing, Chat Moss

Lapwings, Chat Moss

Halfway down the road I finally added yellowhammer to the year list. A nice singing male at a farm entrance. There were a few more further along, together with a pair of reed buntings in a ditch. A small grey bird foraging in a clump of cow parsley and faded poppies turned out to be a lesser whitethroat. There hadn't been many skylarks until I got to Four Lanes End, plenty thereafter. A couple of dozen swifts swooped high overhead as the wind picked up and the skies to the West darkened.

Little Woolden Moss had half a dozen willow warblers singing from the birches and alders, together with a couple of blackcaps. I kept hearing curlews but couldn't spot them. Meadow pipits soared and sang and my first yellow wagtail of the year flew over. It started to thunder and that seemed to encourage all the skylarks in the adjoining field to start singing.

A big, bottle green dragonfly caught my eye: a downy emerald and a lifer for me. There were a couple more common darters, too.

Walking down the path on the North side of the moss I could hear a quail singing in the margins of the field of Winter barley on the other side of the ditch. We seemed to keep in step with each other until we got to the end of that field. I've only ever heard quail from this field.

A hobby rose up from the far end of the moss and flew along the path opposite, rising every so often to chase a dragonfly and spooking a small group of lapwings in the process. They in turn spooked the pair of curlews I couldn't see before.

Hobby, Little Woolden Moss

Walking across the field towards the farm poly tunnels I accidentally flushed a pair of yellow wagtails. They settled back down again a few yards down so I had a proper look at them. I was surprised to see that one of them was a "Channel" wagtail with a lavender blue head and white throat. I tried to get a few record shots but it was very skittish so all I managed was a collection of blurs.

Awful record shot of the "Channel" wagtail

We seemed to be getting away with the weather, though it looked like Glazebury was copping for some filthy stuff. Swifts and house martins fed fairly high overhead while swallows skimmed low over the fields. I'd just got as far as the farmhouses when it started raining and it got progressively worse. It was pelting down by the time I got to the bridge over Glaze Brook but by then I was as wet as I was going to get and spent some time watching a female goosander and her five small ducklings.

Fifteen minutes' wait for the bus, by which time it had brightened up again and the house martins were buzzing the field by the waterworks.

Not a bad bit of a walk and four added to the year list.