Horwich

Juvenile stonechat

After yesterday's largely sedentary day out I decided I needed to give my lungs a bit of a workout. I've been reading interesting reports of sightings from Horwich moors and last week I checked out the bus routes round there, a wryneck turning up there yesterday was another incentive.

I bobbed over to Bolton and got the 125 bus up Old Chorley Road, getting off at Walker Fold Road. I should have gotten off at the next stop and gone straight up Georges Lane but I reckoned I was too late for the bird and wanted a good stroll under my feet. (Besides which I got off at the wrong stop.) It turned out to be a very splendid walk, good weather with enough wind to be refreshing and clear views from the Peak District to Lytham St. Annes.

The walk up to Edge Lane was quiet birdwise, a few magpies and woodpigeons and a couple of chaffinches calling from the bushes by the golf course. A yellowhammer called and flew off down the hill. As I approached Edge Lane I bumped into a charm of goldfinches in the hedgerow accompanied by a couple of chiffchaffs.

All the way down Edge Lane and Matchmoor Lane over to Georges Lane I was accompanied by swallows. I was hoping to get a photo of thirty-odd of them perched on a telegraph line but they scattered in a twittering panic. I was cursing myself for bad fieldcraft when a hobby shot overhead and over the brow of the hill. This wasn't the only falcon available: one kestrel was patrolling the fields halfway up the hill while another was hovering over one of the fields by Old Chorley Road. There were plenty of magpies and woodpigeons about and a mixed flock of jackdaws, rooks and a couple of carrion crows mingled with the horses in the fields.

Walking up Georges Lane towards Rivington Pike most of the small bird sounds coming from the side of the road by the quarry works were actually the sounds of gorse and broom seedpods popping open in the sunlight. (I had more luck on the way back down with a mixed tit flock including a dozen long-tailed tits and half a dozen each of blue tit, great tit and chiffchaff). A bullfinch feeding in one of the hawthorns was an unexpected bonus.

I'd been hearing a buzzard for a while and it finally drifted in overhead then moved on to circle over the fields by the fishery by the road. A few minutes later two kestrels flew over together; they reappeared, still together, half an hour later.

There had been no news of the wryneck since the morning, confirmed by glum-faced birdwatchers coming back down the lane. I can't say I was especially disappointed: I wasn't expecting it to stay long and I was having a very nice walk. Made the nicer by finding a juvenile stonechat hunting from one of the fences, adding a male wheatear to the year list and getting a cup of tea from the cottage coffee shop.

I had my cup of tea, pootled about ineffectually for a bit and decided to make my way home. I bumped into a few birdwatchers coming up for the wryneck and told each who asked that there'd been no reports since lunchtime but now I was on my way home somebody will be finding it.

Many a true word spoken in jest! I found out later that about ten minutes after I'd set off back down the lane somebody reported finding it near the coffee shop. So I'd been within a hundred yards of a lifer and didn't see it. And didn't mind, either. I'd love to see a wryneck sometime but today it would have been the cherry on the cake and the cake was quite nice enough to be getting on with.

On Georges Lane