Blackleach Country Park

Mute swan

I was feeling a bit low energy today so shelved the planned long walk around the mosses. I'll probably do that this weekend. I decided I still needed a short walk so I took the bus over to Blackleach Country Park in Walkden. It's been ages since I last visited, it's at its best in late Spring and early Summer but you never know your luck anywhere this time of year. Walking up from the bus stop I stopped to watch a magpie chasing a sparrowhawk across the road, which was a good start.

Black-headed gulls

The most obvious birds on the reservoir were the black-headed gulls and coots. The gulls congregated on the nesting rafts to loaf while the coots were scattered all about. There were a couple of dozen mallard about, together with a similar number of Canada geese and a pair of gadwall. I could only find the one tufted duck, I should have expected more. Just the one great crested grebe, too. I was watching a family party of mute swans — a pair and seven full grown cygnets — when I heard an odd croaking noise. I looked around, half assuming it was coming from one of the coots when I glanced up and saw two ravens, an adult and a very noisy juvenile, fly over. I'd been so busy trying to work out what the noise was and where it was coming from I missed the chance of getting a photo.

Further along, by the wooden jetty which is a few weeks shy of being condemned as unsafe, there was a kerfuffle as a couple of moorhens objected to a couple of brown rats swimming by.

I took the the path through the woodland that takes you to the M61. Rather than going over the bridge to Kearsley I followed the path round to the North side of the reservoir. The first stretch was very quiet, just a few wrens and robins, and it was only when I got to the motorway I bumped into the first mixed tit flock. It was a challenge picking up the birds' contact calls over the traffic noise but I found a couple of great tits, ha blue tit and a chiffchaff. While I was looking round a buzzard slowly floated overhead and off towards the more open ground to the East.

Further along, where the path ran beside the work on a new housing development, I picked up a second flock. This was quite a bit bigger: half a dozen blue tits, a few great tits and chaffinches and another chiffchaff. A couple of swallows gave alarm calls so I scanned the sky for birds of prey, found none and concluded they were objecting to me. A juvenile bullfinch was hard work to find as it wistfully squeaked in the depths of a hawthorn (at first I was sure it was machine noises from the building site). A short, deep churr in a hedgerow might have been a willow tit or possibly yet another in the repertoire of great tit noises, it was brief and just the once and the bird was in deep cover so I couldn't confirm it one way or another.

Just as was leaving I bumped into the first and only dragonfly of the day, a common hawker, as it patrolled the woodland margin by the reservoir.