Mosses

Along Twelve Yards Road

I bobbed out to get a new monthly travelcard (I won't be using it much but having it just in case will be a handy crutch during the lockdown) and as I was on the train home I stayed on the extra five minutes and got off at Irlam for a walk up Irlam Moss.

Walking up Liverpool Road under the railway bridges there was a hell of a racket as a pair of mistle thrushes defended their Himalayan rowan tree against invading blackbirds. Sheer force of numbers won, which just ratcheted up the noise levels a lot.

Irlam Moss

Astley Road was busy with walkers and cyclists but not stressfully so. The hedgerows were full of small birds, alternating mixed tit flocks and flocks of finches. All the tit flocks had long-tailed tits in the vanguard, followed by great and blue tits (oddly I didn't see any coal tits today) and a few hangers-on, usually chaffinches but one flock had a couple of goldcrests and some house sparrows in tow. The finch flocks were chaffinches with some goldfinches, I looked in vain for siskins, redpolls or bramblings. The first flock I bumped into was quite big for this time of year, forty or so chaffinches and a dozen goldfinches. The finch flocks will be bigger after Christmas. Blackbird numbers were well up this time, most of them feeding in the leaf litter at the bases of hedgerows as nearly all the berries have now been stripped.

Just a couple of kestrels today, and no buzzards (I didn't see a single one all day, which is very unusual).

That big flock of pigeons was back on the same turf field but there were fewer crows about and no gulls.

Chat Moss

The lane got busier towards Four Lanes End and there was a lot of foot traffic to and from Little Woolden Moss, where I guess people had parked their cars. I didn't fancy dealing with a crowd scene there, there isn't enough room for one, I'll come back to it on a week day. Twelve Yards Road, in contrast, was very quiet and I only met half a dozen walkers and a family of cyclists.

All the carrion crows I hadn't seen on Irlam Moss seemed to have joined the Chat Moss regulars, on one field there were thirty-six of them, plus a dozen rooks and forty-odd jackdaws. A cloud of jackdaws rose from Croxden's Moss, the result of a bunch of lads riding scrambler bikes rather than the appearance of a bird of prey. One of the flooded fields held a mixed flock of a few dozen woodpigeons and a score of stock doves. As I was picking out the runners and riders in a finch flock in a clump of beech trees — and found the only yellowhammer of the day — a lone fieldfare flew over. A lone fieldfare is a puzzling thing, like a single long-tailed tit, it was ten minutes before I found the rest of the flock.

I bumped into the biggest mixed tit flock of the day at the bottom of Cutnook Lane: two dozen long-tailed tits, a dozen blue tits, half a dozen great tits, and a couple of goldcrest with goldfinches, chaffinches and a great spotted woodpecker tagging along.

Thence back into Irlam and home for a rather late breakfast.