Elton Reservoir

Ravens a-courting

It was a bright, warm Spring day so I decided to go up to Elton Reservoir to get "the usual drake scaup" onto my year list (he's been on Elton Reservoir all Winter and had been reported as present and correct this morning).

Greenfinch

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the reservoir was that the water was even lower than it was during last year's long dry spell. Work's being done to repair the damage done to the reservoir by the Winter's floods. The car park was mostly spoken for by repairs equipment so I could spend a while checking out the bird feeders without worrying about cars. I've no idea how the feeders get filled but I'm glad they do, it's always nice to see more than a dozen greenfinches in one place. They shared the space with house sparrows, great tits, chaffinches and goldfinches. A pair of ravens courted noisily on one of the electricity pylons behind the sailing club.

Ravens

The great expanses of fresh mud explains why there's been a purple patch of passage waders over the past week or so (and also why it's important to catch them early in the morning before people decide to walk their dogs along the waterline despite all the notices warning about deep mud). It was coming up to lunchtime when I arrived so the only waders I got were a few lapwings and oystercatchers that came in when the dog walkers went home for their dinners. 

Elton Reservoir

It was fairly quiet at the sailing club end of the reservoir, largely because the repair crew's inflatable boat was to-ing a fro-ing a fair bit. The coots, mallards and mute swans weren't much fussed but the Canada geese kept a wide berth and there were no diving ducks this end. There were still fifty-odd black-headed gulls about, dividing their time equally between a diffuse raft loafing near the far bank, a crowd sharing the bit of mud the dogs missed and a flock soaring overhead, possibly after the first decent emergence of flying insects. The warm sun had coaxed a lot of small tortoiseshells into flying about, together with a couple of peacocks. A few St, Thingie's flies flying round the hawthorn bushes were a couple of weeks early by my reckoning. The midges were inevitable in the circumstances.

The paths to the creek were surprisingly good. The creek was almost dry, which gave a conservation team the opportunity to remove a couple of bin bags full of offerings to the Dog Shit Fairy. Beyond the creek the path was reassuringly execrable. I decided to keep to the horses' hoofprints on the principle that if the ground could support a horse it could support me and this worked in all but the places where the horses got their fetlocks dirty.

Goldeneye

I'd come to see the usual drake scaup and he was nowhere to be seen! A raft of 22 goldeneyes was almost compensation. The only other diving ducks were a pair of sleeping tufties.

Goldeneye

Goldeneye, a pair of sleeping tufted ducks in the foreground

A water rail squealing in the reeds on Capsticks (the wet field at the Radcliffe end of the reservoir) was the day's first addition to the year list. I decided to have a quick nosy on Withins Reservoir. The path was literally a stream, which gave me the chance to clean my boots. I had a scan of the field to see if any wheatears had dropped in; they hadn't. A raft of birds far out on the water at the West end of the reservoir turned out to be a shoveler, two dozen tufted ducks, a pair of great crested grebes and the usual drake scaup. Even at this distance I could see he was now properly into his adult plumage.

I got the bus into Rochdale, the idea being to get the train back into Manchester and check out what was on the canal at Castleton and the fields ponds at Mills Hill. A swallow flying over Heywood Cemetery was a happy bonus and the third addition to the year list. A flock of Canada geese were dotted about in pairs in the field by the canal just outside Castleton. The big pool in the field just outside Mills Hill only had four coots on the water, a couple of pairs of teal dabbled in the flooded field on the Chadderton side of the line here.

I decided to get the tram to the Trafford Centre to get the full value of the tram ticket I'd bought to get to Bury. At Pomona I watched a male sparrowhawk soaring high over the canal. Every so often one of a pair of lesser black-backs would drift over to check it out, the gull easily dwarfing the sparrowhawk. I'd hoped to do some gull watching from Wharfside but there was a sculling race in progress and the only birds on the water was the usual herd of mute swans.

The Trafford Centre was quiet save for a handful of pigeons and a pair of carrion crows. I got back in time to see the pair of coal tits arrive with the evening crew at the bird feeders.

Quite a fruitful day.