Flixton

Treecreeper, Dutton's Pond

I had a wander around Flixton this afternoon. I began with a lunchtime stroll around Dutton's Pond, which was quiet with people but busy with birds.

I'd scarcely gone through the gate to Dutton's Pond when I encountered a big mixed tit flock. Great tits and coal tits were in the vanguard for a change with a dozen each of long-tailed tits and blue tits and a pair of treecreepers tagging along. There was a pair of mallards and ten moorhens on the pond itself.

Dutton's Pond

I walked down to Jack Lane by the path along the railway embankment. A small tit flock in the trees by the line included a couple of goldcrests. Woodpigeons were thin on the ground but I was glad to see any at all, all our local ones have gone missing. The magpies in the trees suddenly went very quiet and I looked up and saw a peregrine passing low overhead and off towards Carrington.

Jack Lane LNR

I took the path through the Jack Lane local nature reserve. The reedbeds and waterlogged willows looked just right for me to be finding willow tits, water rails or reed buntings so I didn't find any of them. 

I went up Jack Lane towards Towns Gate, turning off  onto Irlam Road to go down to the locks. A flock of a couple of hundred starlings whistled and squeaked from the power lines by the sewage works before flying down for afternoon tea. I'd just reached the river when the first cyclists of the day turned up: it was kicking-out time for the school kids and a few dozen of them were off home to Irlam. It was evidently knocking-off time somewhere in Irlam because half a dozen blokes in overalls came cycling back the other way. I couldn't really complain, the walk had been dead quiet up til then and on muddy country lanes cyclists are like death and taxes.

Two hundred and fifty-odd black-headed gulls dotted about in groups, some feeding on the filtration beds, some loafing about on the locks and the largest group feeding on the small field by the beds, in the company of a couple of lesser black-backs. The filtration beds were busy: besides the starlings and gulls were twenty-odd magpies and at least a dozen pied wagtails.

Upstream of the locks a dozen pairs of mallard mooched about on the water, a few moorhens fussed about and a dabchick was busy feeding near the Irlam bank of the canal. Downstream there were a few more moorhens, a cormorant and a mute swan. Fifty-odd pigeons sat about on the locks with the gulls and a dunnock made a half-hearted attempt at singing before flying off into the bushes by the lock offices.

I walked down to the station for the train home, stopping off to have a look at the bit of stranded River Irwell on Fairhills Road (not a lot, just a couple of pairs of mallard). I got to the station with more than half an hour to wait for my train and watched the pied wagtails flying over to roost on the factory roof opposite.