Local patch

Barton Clough

It was another batten down the hatches morning in the garden though it started to calm down by dinnertime. Pairs of blue tits and great tits fed on the sunflowers and the male coal tit made a noisy comeback. The goldcrest was a lot quieter: I might have missed it had I not been out refilling the fat feeders. The blackcap gave a mid-morning blast of song and went to play with the spadgers in the brambles.

• Black-headed Gull 3 overhead
• Blackcap 1
• Blue Tit 2
• Coal Tit 1
• Common Gull 1 overhead
• Goldcrest 1
• Goldfinch 2
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 12
• Jackdaw 1
• Magpie 1
• Robin 2
• Rook 1
• Starling 10
• Woodpigeon 1

Plenty of black-headed gulls on the school playing field today.

• Black-headed Gull 68
• Collared Dove 1
• Common Gull 1
• Feral Pigeon 1
• Herring Gull 4:  1 2nd-winter, 3 1st-winters 
• House Sparrow 1
• Jackdaw 8
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 1
• Magpie 4
• Rook 6
• Starling 3
• Woodpigeon 8

I went for a stroll around the local patch. The most notable thing was sixty-one starlings splitting their time between the avenue of poplars along the footpath and the left wing of one of the football pitches. Another, smaller flock was on the park with a flock of a dozen redwings and a couple of mistle thrushes. The great tits and blue tits are pairing up and calling from the shrubberies.

A flock of a couple of dozen goldfinches flitted about the old cornfield. A few more fed in the treetops by the school, accompanied by redwings and a couple of greenfinches.

• Black-headed Gull 4
• Blackbird 7
• Blue Tit 8
• Carrion Crow 4
• Chaffinch 2
• Dunnock 2
• Feral Pigeon 30
• Goldfinch 30
• Great Tit 8
• Greenfinch 2
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 1
• Long-tailed Tit 1
• Magpie 16
• Mistle Thrush 3
• Redwing 24
• Robin 6
• Song Thrush 2
• Starling 84
• Woodpigeon 19
• Wren 2

Thence over to the Trafford Centre, with a loop around Beyond and iFly in the hopes of catching up with the usual peregrine falcons. Plenty of carrion crows and magpies but no falcons today.

I had no joy finding the usual peregrine falcons on Beyond this afternoon.
They must have been terrorising the pigeons elsewhere in Trafford Park