Mersey Valley

Sleeping heron, Sale Water Park

It was a bright, cool, Winter's morning so I decided to have a wander round the Mersey Valley once I'd made sure the cat and the garden birds had been fed. I'd barely put the lid on the peanut feeders before three great tits descended on it. Now the weather's turned I'll have to be careful to keep everything topped up.

Priory Gardens

Today I started my visit from Priory Gardens. I don't know why I don't do this more often, it's a nice walk and this morning it was dead quiet. Plenty of robins, blackbirds and magpies and a small tit flock in the trees by the path and plenty of noise from jays gathering the last of the acorns. The paths were a tad muddy so in the end I elected to take the bridleway path alongside the motorway and round onto Sale Water Park.

Black-headed gulls, Sale Water Park

A hundred or so black-headed gulls loafed on the water in the company of handfuls of common gulls and lesser black-backs and fifty-odd coot. A dabchick fished by the path and four great crested grebes fished over on the other side.

Walking round to Broad Ees Dole moorhens dashed to and fro across the path. A pair of mute swans and half a dozen mallards fed by the path on the "teal pool" and a dozen teal fossicked round the roots of the drowned willows.

This juvenile moorhen has earned its stripes but not its colours,
Broad Ees Dole

The pool in front of the hide was relatively quiet: a few mallard and Canada geese, a couple of dabchicks, a gadwall, a goosander and three shovelers.

The water park was getting busy with late lunchtime visitors now and I was wishing I'd brought a pointed stick with me. Five cormorants sat on the electricity pylons and a couple of others fished over by the water activity jetty. There were more ducks at this end of the lake, equal numbers of mallard, gadwall and tufties. A lone redhead goosander loafed and preened at the end of the lake.

Goosander, Sale Water Park

A chap was filling the feeders by the café, the birds not even bothering to wait for him to finish before diving in. Even the willow tits were on the bird table as he was filling the fat ball feeders a couple of feet away.

I walked through Sale Ees to Jackson's Boat. The ring-necked parakeets which had been screeching away in the background wheeled around the trees. More magpies and jays in the trees and a group of six carrion crows made a ruckus as they bounced about the treetops.

Hardy Farm

The river at Jackson's Boat was running quietly but there was no sign of any ducks or wagtails around. I decided to walk through Hardy Farm and thence home.