Pennington Flash

Egyptian goose

I was still a bit miffed at dipping on the Egyptian geese at Pennington Flash so I decided to have another go. Today I was lucky: three of them, two adults and a juvenile, were huddled with the mallards and Canada geese by the car park, despite all the efforts of some noisy children whose parent was encouraging them to chase the mallards into the water. Another family, eager to feed the ducks, made a telling intervention.

Mute swans

I spotted a couple of common terns fishing over on the opposite bank. They were briefly joined by the Arctic tern I saw on Saturday. Today was sunny and windy so there was but a handful of swifts feeding over the water and no martins at all. There seemed to be more great crested grebes today.

From the Horrocks Hide there were dozens of mallard loafing on the spit, a mixture of females, juveniles and mallards now more or less in full eclipse. One of the oystercatchers objected to this and harassed some of them away in a fit of pique. A dozen lesser black-backs and a couple of cormorants joined the Canada geese at the end of the spit.

Oystercatcher

Walking down the path I noticed another nesting coot on one of the pools.  The area around the Ramsden Hide is more sheltered and it was here I started to hear more birdsong: a couple each of blackcap and chiffchaff and single reed warbler and willow warbler. No Cetti's or common sandpiper today, but there was a family of gadwall together with a couple of families of mallard presenting a confusing array of juvenile, female and eclipse male plumages. A couple of dozen house martins hawked low over the water.

There had been reports of a couple of scaup over the Plank Lane end of the flash so I decided to walk thataway for a change. Black-headed gulls and more mallard were loafing round the corner by the canal and a couple of reed buntings were singing here. Half a dozen common terns floated over and a couple fished in the shallows near the margins, which piqued the interest of the black-headed gulls which tried and failed to steal their catch.

Common tern fishing

I wasn't feeling optimistic about finding any scaup, I'd only been able to find a pair of tufted duck which is a low tally for me on the flash. It wasn't until I was approaching the Plank Lane exit that I finally saw something promising near the far bank, so of course it dived underwater. After a few minutes I was ready to conclude that it must have been one of the great crested grebes when the bird in question bobbed back up again and proved to be a male scaup. I couldn't see any others; I'm not complaining, a Summer scaup is always a nice bonus.

I just missed the 588 bus to Leigh bus station so I walked down into Plank Lane to get the 584 and thence home. A nice few hours' stroll.