Notlob

Male wheatear, High Rid Reservoir

I'm trying to fit a lot of birdwatching in before last April's full lockdown gets reimposed but after taking yesterday off to listen to the cricket I'd lost momentum a bit and couldn't decide where to go or why. So I bobbed over to High Rid, partly to get me going somewhere, partly because I think it's underwatched and underreported, partly in the hope some of the passage migrants seen up on Winter Hill might drift across the road and save me a climb.

It was one of those September days where by lunchtime it was like a warm Summer's teatime and lit accordingly. The walk up Fall Birch Road was punctuated every twenty yards by robins.

Gulls following the plough

As I reached High Rid Reservoir I could see that there was a raft of gulls on the water and beyond that a couple of hundred gulls, jackdaws, rooks and carrion crows followed a tractor that was ploughing up a field of stubble. Most of the gulls were black-headed, with a few dozen lesser black-backs and a handful of herring gulls. I saw a common gull fly in as I was walking down the road but that was the only one I saw. A young buzzard flew in to the field expecting to get a free worm feast but a dozen jackdaws flying in close formation chased it off. Another buzzard soared over the field and drifted over towards Lostock, accidentally spooking a kestrel in the process.

A couple of dozen mallards dozed by the water's edge but there was just the one tufted duck on there. A couple of dabchicks bobbed up and down, careful not to get too close to any of the large gulls. A snipe flew over, circled the reservoir then headed East, the only wader of the day.

High Rid Reservoir

There were goldfinches and chiffchaffs in the trees by the reservoir and plenty of woodpigeons lumbering about. Linnets and meadow pipits fed in the remaining stubble in the field, it took me ages to find them even though I was hearing them all the time. It took even longer to find the skylarks.

Over by the sluice that becomes Bessy Brook a juvenile grey wagtail caught my eye. As I was watching it a couple of birds bobbed up and sat on the wall. A couple of wheatears, a male and a female type. The male was quite skittish, the other didn't mind my being there.

Wheatears, High Rid Reservoir

Wheatear, High Rid Reservoir

Wheatear, High Rid Reservoir

It had become a nice afternoon and I wasn't in any rush to get back to Bolton so I decided to carry on walking from the reservoir down Old Hall Road. It's a new walk for me and I found it very enjoyable. It starts off as a rough cobbled path by the golf course and eventually becomes a lane leading onto Old Kiln Lane. I stopped to watch a couple of goldcrests in a conifer. They were accompanied by a couple of finches I couldn't identify: not chaffinches because they were streaky, not siskins because they were too big and had warm brown breasts, and I couldn't get a good enough view of them to justify my identifying them as crossbills. A little further along I spent five minutes watching a dogfight between a jackdaw and a kestrel.

Jackdaw and kestrel

Jackdaw and kestrel

Jackdaw and kestrel

I got to the main road from Old Kiln Lane and decided to cross and carry on down to Doffcocker Lodge, a new site for me. I was surprised by its intimacy, it's almost people's back gardens. There were a couple of dozen each of tufted ducks and coots and a few mallard. A pair of great crested grebes had a couple of surprisingly young juveniles in tow.

Great crested grebe and young, Doffcocker Lodge

Tufted ducks, Doffcocker Lodge
A lot of Winter disappointment can be put down to looking at a possible scaup and finding a tufted duck lying on its back.

After half an hour's wander I got the bus into Bolton and got off home via a circuitous route because I've been getting bored of the train journey from Bolton to Salford Crescent.