Icy

Shovelers and coot

I wanted to go a bit further afield today before the inevitable full lockdown comes into play. I had a lie-in so I would miss the trains that might tempt me to go roving outside Greater Manchester and decided to go over to Pennington Flash to check out the gull roost — there's been a passage of Iceland gulls into Greater Manchester and there's always the chance of a Mediterranean gull or a yellow-legged gull. You have to hope.

The path into Pennington Flash from St Helens Road was horrible: the usual muddy puddles had spread and frozen over into a mosaic of mud, water, crunchy ice and black ice. It was so bad that on the way back I walked down the road instead.

A couple of dozen mallard fussed about in the brook by the bridge in the company of a few coot, a tufted duck and a mute swan. I wobbled over the bridge into the car park which was fairly busy but not silly so. 

Black-headed gulls

The flash was mostly clear of ice, what ice there was was generally littered with gulls. There were a couple of hundred black-headed gulls, with more coming in, a couple of dozen common gulls and a lot of large gulls, mostly settled in rafts out in the water. It was a bit early for the full gull roost so there were only fifty-odd herring gulls, slightly fewer lesser black-backs and about thirty great black-backs. I spent a while checking the largest raft which was over towards the sailing club, mostly black-backs of both flavours on the left, mostly herring gulls on the right. There was a lot of variation in the greys of the herring gulls, though none of them came close to being dark enough for the common gull grey of a yellow-legged gull. My eye was caught by a couple with a lot of white in their tertials but both birds proved to be good herring gulls with black primaries when they drifted round into full side view. I was puzzled for a while by one bird with a slightly darker mantle and a distinct hood which I concluded in the end was just an odd-looking herring gull (it was too big to be an odd-looking common gull though the shape of its head and bill was quite a lot that way) (I was wrong: it *was* a common gull).

Common gull with a distinct hood

Then my eye drifted to one bird loafing near the halfway point of the raft just in front of a couple of great black-backs. The grey on its back looked a bit pale but was that just the contrast with the great black-backs? Possibly, but overall the bird didn't quite look right. Then again, herring gulls that don't quite look right are ten a penny and nearly all turn out to be herring gulls. Then the bird drifted round and there it was: an adult Iceland gull with white primaries. Nice, it's an age since I've seen an adult.

Gulls weren't the only birds on the flash. Mallard, mute swans and Canada geese hung around the shoreline in smaller numbers than usual. There were fair numbers of coots and tufties and about a dozen goldeneyes. Half a dozen drake goosanders flew in and landed in mid-water, an outrageous flash of bright salmon orange on a grey day. There were more ducks on the spit by the Horrocks Hide, mostly mallards and shovelers with a dozen each of teal and gadwall. Half a dozen great crested grebes swam out into the open water and a dozen cormorants hung their wings out to dry at the end of the spit. Further beyond there was another raft of gulls in the bight by the Ramsdales pool, this time mostly herring and black-headed gulls.

Pennington Flash

The small pools by the sides of the path were nearly entirely frozen over though there was just enough open water in front of the Tom Edmondson Hide for a group of shovelers to take turns to bathe in.

I looked at the bobsleigh run that was the path down to the Ramsdales Hide and decided to give it a miss this time.

Walking back I bumped into the first and only tit flock of the afternoon and a small flock of redwings.

Pennington Flash