Stretford and Sale

Grey heron, Sale Water Park

I was going to have a long walk today but took an age to get my act together and ended up going for a wander round Stretford Meadows and over to Sale Water Park.

Stretford Meadows seemed very quiet but when I looked at my notes there was a fair variety about. I expect the impression's gained by the complete absence of warblers. The most obvious birds were the robins singing from every thicket, the squadrons of woodpigeons flying overhead and the group of six carrion crows bouncing about the tops. Half a dozen magpies rummaged around in the trees by the cricket pitch and a jay was busy collecting acorns.

Stretford Meadows

I scared up a party of half a dozen meadow pipits. Two of the birds came back and puzzled me by landing in a hawthorn bush to feed amongst the top branches like leaf warblers. They were spooked a couple of times by magpies, and again by a passing kestrel, but kept returning to feed on the branches. Try as I might I couldn't turn them into anything other than meadow pipits behaving in a most un-meadow pipit-like way.

Kickety Brook was frustrating: I could hear a mixed tit flock but couldn't find where it was. Starlings congregating on the electricity pylons by the motorway were harbingers of Winter.

I had more luck finding the mixed tit flock by the path from Stretford Ees down to the bridge over the river: the long-tailed tits flew over to check me out before returning to their gleaning and foraging with the great tits and coal tits.

River Mersey

The river was in full spate, the only birds were a couple of overflying magpies.

Sale Water Park was fairly quiet, possibly due to the canoeing class going on over on the other side of the lake. A couple of dozen black-headed gulls and a lesser black-back loafed in the middle of the water while the swans, Canada geese and coots lurked by the margins near the reeds. Oddly, the only mallards on the lake were two farm ducks. A heron sat on the island next to the end of Cow Lane.

Half a dozen mallards were on the "teal pool" on Broad Ees Dole with a couple of dabchicks. The pool by the hide was busier with a dozen gadwall, half a dozen each of dabchick and coot, a few moorhens and a couple of wigeon. Five herons loafed on the big island.

Adult and juvenile dabchicks, Broad Ees Dole

I wandered over to the café (too late for a cup of tea) and sat on the bench to watch the feeding station for a while. The great tits tried to monopolise as usual but the were displaced by half a dozen magpies which made a right Horlicks of trying to raid the fat feeders. In the end they gave up, except one that was canny enough to realise that the tits dislodged almost as much food as they ate. Which worked a couple of times but seeing as every time it turned up the tits were spooked and disappeared it soon got browned off and flew off to join its mates in the next field. Great tits, blue tits, coal tits and a nuthatch but no willow tit again today.

As I waited for the bus home by the Barlow Moor Road tram stop I counted 374 jackdaws flying over to roost over at Hardy Farm, mostly in flocks of six to a dozen but including a couple of forty-plus flocks.