All the young things

Juvenile grey heron, Sale Ees

After all that drama throughout Spring I think the only corvids that successfully nested in any of the trees down the road were the pair of magpies that used their old nest after the new one caught the attention of the carrion crows. On the school playing field I haven't seen any young crows, only a couple of young rooks and half a dozen jackdaws. The pair of crows that nested near the library look to have raised a couple of youngsters and they've been swaggering around the rooftop like slightly tatty teddy boys.

Feeding time, great tits in my garden

The blue tits have emerged from post-breeding moult and are celebrating the fact by chasing each other in and out of the crowd of sparrows on the bird feeder. One of the youngsters turned up a little afterwards. The pair of great tits are back with at least one hungry mouth tagging along with them.  Another welcome return is the song thrush that's been singing all morning.

I decided to have a wander down the Mersey this afternoon. I started at Chorlton Water Park, which was a lot quieter than last time I visited (probably a function of the weather and the shops and pubs being open).

Young cock house sparrow, Chorlton Water Park

Chorlton Water Park hosted the usuals: Canada geese, mallard and coot, a few dozen black-headed gulls, a couple each of great crested grebes and tufted ducks and half a dozen ring-necked parakeets shouting the odds from the treetops.

Barlow Tip was lively with warblers: blackcaps, chiffchaffs and whitethroats singing from the trees and flitting round the bushes and thistles in family groups. A couple of song thrushes filled in the gaps in the soundscape. There were a lot of blackbirds and goldfinches about and a female bullfinch was feeding in one of the hawthorn bushes.

Walking along the river towards Jackson's Boat the bushes on the opposite bank were busy with long-tailed tits, whitethroats and blue tits. A couple of juvenile grey wagtails fed along the bank. A large flock of sand martins hawked high overhead. A rather ghostly looking insect whizzing around a clump of ragwort was my first emerald damselfly.

Male grey wagtail in mid-moult, Jackson's Boat

A cormorant flew in at Jackson's Boat. A male grey wagtail preening on the bank was in the decidedly tatty stage of moult. The first swifts of the day turned up and a family of ring-necked parakeets made a racket in the ash trees in the pub car park.

A ring-necked parakeet busy fading into the background, Jackson's Boat

I decided to walk through Sale Ees. A flock of swallows were feeding low over the field by the river. More chiffchaffs, whitethroats, song thrushes and parakeets in the trees by the path and a couple of reed buntings singing from the flag irises along the stream where a juvenile heron was lurking.

The café was open so I decided to buy my first take-out cup of tea since early March and settle down to see what would come to the feeders. A bunch of great tits and blue tits monopolised the feeders until they were spooked by a woodpigeon that kept trying — and failing — to negotiate a tube of sunflower seeds. When the tits came back they were joined by a nuthatch and a coal tit. Eventually I finished my cup of tea and the willow tit I was hoping for arrived.

The weather turned so I took the hint and sloped off for the tram. Which turned out to be lucky as my first Southern hawker dragonfly of the year was patrolling the roadside by the station entrance.