Trafford Centre

Goldcrest

After a night of listening to lustful foxes (I was awake anyway) I opened the bedroom curtains to find a goldcrest feeding on the pine cone near the living room window. Which is a nice way to start the day. Other than that it was pretty much business as usual in the garden again. Another refill of the sunflower seed feeders brought the long-tailed tits in from their foraging in the sycamore trees.

• Black-headed Gull 1 overhead
• Blackbird 1
• Blue Tit 3
• Coal Tit 1
• Collared Dove 2
• Dunnock 2
• Feral Pigeon 2
• Goldcrest 1
• Goldfinch 1
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 20
• Jackdaw 1
• Long-tailed Tit 7
• Magpie 1
• Robin 1
• Starling 14
• Woodpigeon 2

Goldcrest, showing the gold this time

Spadger.
This is the second-in-command on the silver team.

It was a dry day (insofar as it wasn't raining and I kept off the grass) so I decided to go for a walk towards the Trafford Centre. Stretford Ees is slightly further away but I generally head that way, via Stretford Meadows, because it doesn't seem such a long walk. I think the walk to the Trafford Centre feels longer because it's mostly long straight lines.

I walked under the motorway subway and down to Kingsway Park. This is a long stretch of grass with a few trees peppered in it; you can tell the course of the old Longford Brook by the public parks running the length where the ground's too boggy to build on. This was more than adequately illustrated today by the forty-odd black-headed gulls skating on the frozen pond that is the football pitch.

I passed the retail park and back under the motorway at the Trafford Centre junction then took the road that loops around Beyond and Chill Factor^e before rejoining Trafford Way. Three bullfinches — two females and a male — were feeding in the brambles by the car park and a male peregrine was perched on the roof of Beyond. By the way it was mantling it obviously had caught something, by the size it was more likely a thrush or blackbird rather than a pigeon.

• Black-headed Gull 30 1 overhead
• Blue Tit 1
• Bullfinch 3
• Carrion Crow 5
• Dunnock 1
• Great Tit 1
• Jackdaw 5
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 1 overhead
• Magpie 10
• Peregrine 1
• Pied Wagtail 6
• Robin 1
• Woodpigeon 2

I went home from the Trafford Centre via Lostock Park. The afternoon was getting on so most of the birds were settling down for the night.

• Black-headed Gull 9 overhead
• Blackbird 8
• Blue Tit 1
• Carrion Crow 1
• Common Gull 1 overhead
• Feral Pigeon 1
• Goldfinch 2
• Great Tit 3
• Greenfinch 1
• House Sparrow 4
• Magpie 8
• Mistle Thrush 2
• Robin 1
• Starling 1
• Woodpigeon 6
• Wren 1