Etherow Country Park

Keg Wood

Looking out onto the school playing fields across the road I noticed a few more young woodpigeons in the crowd. I often wonder what it is about this field that makes it so productive, I don't know of another local school playing field or park that supports anything like the number of woodpigeons, rooks or gulls.

I decided to have a few hours out at Etherow Country Park and Keg Wood, the weather looking grey but OK. I decided to go by train to Stockport — ten minutes on the local into town, cross to the other side of the platform, ten minutes to Stockport and then the bus over to Compstall. It's lucky I got the train, I haven't seen any of the city centre peregrines yet this year and there one was, buzzing the pigeons over London Road as we were arriving at Piccadilly.

Etherow Country Park wasn't particularly busy when I arrived, possibly because the weather had closed in and there was rain in the air. Walking along the little canal I noticed another couple of families of brand spanking new moorhens and coots and the coots that were sitting on the nest last time I visited were still there. The drake mallards were starting to come into eclipse plumage, all the drake mandarins were in full eclipse.

Mandarin duck

The family of grey wagtails were still active around the overspill "waterfall" by the little scary wooden bridge. No sign of any dippers this time, though.

I had a wander into Keg Wood. The rain had stopped but it was still very humid, which made the walking a bit uncomfortable. I soldiered on, on the off-chance of seeing a stray pied flycatcher or even the bearded vulture that was reported as being floating round the Goyt Valley last night. Fate has a way of putting you in your place so I saw neither and didn't even get to see any of the local buzzards until I was on my way for the bus home.

The woods were relatively quiet of birdsong: chiffchaffs, wrens and blackbirds were noisy enough but there was just one each of robin and blackcap singing. A singing stock dove was a pleasant surprise. I had a sit down at the "bus shelter" at Sunny Corner. The small beginnings of a Winter mixed tit flock turned up: a family of nuthatches, a couple of blue tits, a coal tit and a treecreeper.

The walk back was a bit slow and erratic on my part as the path was littered with tiny toadlets and I was trying not to step on any.
 
The weather had cleared by the time I was back at the country park, consequently it was a bit busier than when I arrived. My timing was quite nice. Another nice afternoon's walk.