Mersey Valley

Goosander, Sale Water Park

The weather forecast promised it was going to be a bleak morning turning nasty and wet by lunchtime so I judged it should be safe to go for a walk round Sale Water Park and nudge the year list along a bit.

Stretford Meadows

Even though it was lunchtime Stretford Meadows was fairly quiet, just a few people walking along the bridleway path and I had the open meadow to myself and the birds. As usual the magpies and carrion crows were most obviously kicking about with the blackbirds and woodpigeons quietly going about their business. 

I'd hoped to see the first kestrel of the year but was having no luck until I heard a kerfuffle over in the hawthorns beyond the rise. The pair of kestrels had taken objection to a buzzard which had landed for a bit of worm-hunting. Once they'd put it to flight a pair of crows escorted it over the motorway and off towards Ashton-on-Mersey.

Stretford Meadows' pair of kestrels after they saw off the buzzard
(Male in the left)

A family party of long-tailed tits fussing about the base of one of the electricity pylons was a hint of a mixed tit flock that never materialised until I'd passed under Chester Road where the hawthorn hedge was thick with great tits and blue tits. One of the taller hawthorns sounded like it was full of goldfinches, in fact it was full of chaffinches and blue tits and just three particularly vocal goldfinches.

Stonechat in the gloom of Stretford Ees

The rain eased as I arrived at Stretford Ees but it was still very gloomy. It took a while to spot the pair of stonechats. They shadowed me along the path awhile, all the time keeping their distance just in case I was a dog in disguise.

Sale Water Park was busier, unsurprisingly, but not silly so. There was a small raft of black-headed and common gulls on the water and a party of five dabchicks were feeding by the reeds. Broad Ees Dole was frozen over so the teal were confined to feeding among the drowned tree roots by the path. A small group of herring gulls and lesser black-backs loitered by the slipway with the Canada geese. There were a lot more gadwall than mallard, surprisingly enough, and half a dozen goosanders fed at the Cow Lane end of the lake.

I spent five minutes watching the feeders by the café and added willow tit to the year list. I walked on through Sale Ees as the light started to fail. The parakeets were going to roost as I passed Jackson's Boat and the first eighty-odd jackdaws were settling in on Hardy Farm. On my way home I spotted an empty bus going my way and took it, it would have been daft not to.

Kickety Brook passing under the tram bridge and the Bridgewater Canal aquaduct.