Bits of Birdwatching Stuff: Etherow Country Park

Saturday 5 December 2020

Etherow Country Park

Moorhen, Etherow Country Park

It was a bright sunny December day and the choice was anywhere in Tier 3 that wasn't going to be a cycling race track so I decided to have an afternoon wander round Etherow Country Park and Keg Wood.

Female blackcap in Mahonia "Charity"

The great spotted woodpecker and the goldcrest didn't turn up in the garden this morning. Twenty-odd spadgers and half a dozen starlings pretty much monopolised the fat feeders, the titmice had to sneak in as they may. A couple of the blue tits kept returning to the Mahonia flowers, I suspect to feed on nectar as much as to catch any stray insects. Further confirmation that Winter's on its way was the arrival of a female blackcap which lingered a while amongst the flowers. The woodpigeons are back from wherever it is they've been, I've sort of missed them.

River Etherow

Etherow Country Park was unsurprisingly busy but not ridiculously so. A hundred or more black-headed gulls squabbled round the lake at the car park end while geese and mallards bustled about begging for food from passers-by. There were plenty of moorhens about but there seemed to be fewer coots than usual. Just a handful of tufted ducks, too.

There were a few tit flocks in the beech trees along the little canal but surprisingly few finches: a handful each of chaffinch and goldfinch. I took the bridge over the canal and walked down the footpath between the canal and the river. The river was in full spate with the melt water from yesterday's snow so I didn't hold up any hopes of dipper or grey wagtail today. As it happens, a grey wagtail did fly overhead as I walked across from the weir to the path to Keg Wood.

Keg Wood

Keg Wood was very quiet. Other than a small tit flock — half a dozen blue tits, a pair of great tits, a coal tit and a nuthatch — what wasn't a robin was a woodpigeon or carrion crow. There was still snow about from yesterday, just odd small patches in areas of exposed shadows but snow nonetheless. There was much more over on the hilltops, at first I thought some of the farmers had been landscaping and put down swathes of gravel.