Trafford Park

Tenax Circle, Trafford Park

I was feeling the effects of cabin fever, both mentally and physically, so decided on a Sunday afternoon walk. It was a dull, cold but dry afternoon so I decided to avoid all the local parks and green places and had a walk through the industrial estates of Trafford Park. I'd hoped to cap it with a nosy round Trafford Ecology Park but that's only open Monday to Friday 9:00am to 4:00pm.

There were no great surprises along the way: plenty of magpies, pigeons, carrion crows and woodpigeons, occasional blackbirds, robins and wrens. There was a constant stream of gulls overhead, equal numbers of black-headed gulls and herring gulls, a few common gulls and a smattering of lesser black-backs, most of which were first or second Winter birds. A lone great black-back flew overhead as I approached Trafford Park Road.

I moved on to Wharfside where the docks were thick with gulls: a hundred or more black-headed gulls, a raft of forty-odd herring gulls, a similar number of lesser black-backs and over towards the Ontario Basin a mixed crowd of gulls mostly hidden by a herd of mute swans. 

I was walking through Stretford town centre when I saw the first and only cormorant of the day.