Mosses

Walking towards Moss Lane, Glazebury

The house sparrows brought in another lot of hungry new mouths this morning. They joined the great tits and made inroads on the peanut feeder. One of the juvenile blue tits made an appearance, too. It's at that peculiar stage of moving out of juvenile plumage. I always think that the transition from juvenile to adult blue tit would involve dialling down the lemon tones and dialling up the black, and I'm always wrong: all the colour fades like a ghost first and that's the stage where it's at now.

I decided to go for a walk up Irlam Moss. It's only five minutes on the train and a short walk down to the bottom of Astley Road.

Irlam Moss was fairly quiet — only a blackcap and rather a lot of song thrushes were singing — but there were plenty of birds around. I'd been thinking that this wasn't much of a Summer for swallows but the past couple of days I've been seeing plenty of them feeding low over fields. Today they'd been favouring the freshly-mown grass being readied for cutting as turf. Other than the swallows these fields were barren of birds, the finches, warblers and titmice favouring the hedgerows, the magpies, reed buntings and yellowhammers the barley fields and the blackbirds and woodpigeons flitting between the two. A female kestrel flew over one of the farm buildings next to the road, hovered over me for a minute then flew over to see if the grass-cutting had disturbed any rodents. A buzzard soared high overhead.

Approaching the bridge over the motorway I noticed a ploughed field dotted with mistle thrushes and pied wagtails. The thrushes appeared to be a family group: two adults and five juveniles in that peculiar mottled plumage that looks like they have a touch of mildew.

Over the bridge and a couple of fields where the tractors were cutting and rolling turfs. A small flock of black-headed gulls and a few lesser black-backs followed the tractors, together with what would turn out to be the only lapwing of the day.

On this side of the motorway there was a lot more birdsong, with blackcaps, wrens and blackbirds joining in. More fields of barley and more singing yellowhammers, which made them a lot easier to find as even a male yellowhammer in breeding finery disappears into a backdrop of ripe barley. A lot more linnets around, too.

At Little Woolden Moss the blackcaps and reed buntings were in full song. In contrast the willow warblers were quietly going about their business with only the occasional brief snatch of song to show willing.

It was quite busy (these things are relative: there were fourteen people and a dog but it's only a narrow path with few passing places, one of which was being monopolised by a group of ladies having a lunch break). Consequently I was a bit fidgety and didn't linger much. I struggled to get my eye in so only saw four ringed plovers on the wet and caught a male hobby flying over. Meadow pipits were still doing their parachute drop song display but the skylarks were nearly silent: the only one I saw gave a short call before disappearing into the adjoining field of barley. A large flock of swifts hunted overhead, every so often joined by a few of the swallows from the field. A buzzard flew over, mobbed by half a dozen carrion crows.

Walking down to Moss Lane I couldn't see much except overflying swallows, linnets and woodpigeons though I could hear house sparrows and blackbirds in the barley. My suspicions that the yellow wagtails were lurking in the potato field by the poly tunnels was confirmed when one briefly flew up and immediately dove for cover. Its head looked pale and greyish but I couldn't honestly say whether it was the Channel wagtail I saw previously, a trick of the light or wishful thinking.

The Glaze Brook added a grey wagtail and a couple of juvenile goosanders to the tally.

Waiting for the bus home from the Trafford Centre I noticed what looked like a herring gull. It looked a lot dark, more like common gull grey on the wings, though that could just have been due to the flat, gloomy light. It looked a bit front-heavy, too but it could just be a big male. Then I realised there was hardly any white on the primaries, just small mirrors on the outermost ones. A yellow-legged gull! Almost but not quite an adult as there was a bit of smudginess about the primary coverts. I'm guessing a fourth-Summer but could be wrong.