Urmston

Treecreeper, Urmston Meadows

I started the day listening to what is effectively my first dawn chorus of the year, robin and blackbird singing in the dark and the song thrush waiting until grey light. The collared doves and woodpigeons and dunnocks waited for the sunshine before letting rip. The breeding season weighs particularly heavily on the dunnocks, as the robins and spadgers would testify. There's no delicate way of saying this: this time of year your average dunnock is an indiscriminately-directed flying bollock. Most of the morning the most usual source of noise in the back garden is small birds expressing outrage at the importuning of dunnocks. It all got a bit quieter once three dunnocks got involved with each other in the blackcurrant bushes.

A dozen black-headed gulls mingled with the jackdaws and woodpigeons on the school playing field while a couple of adult herring gulls and a first-Winter hunted for worms over near the netball court.

Cob Kiln Wood

It was a bright, clear, cool day so I decided on a lunchtime wander through Cob Kiln Wood down to Urmston Meadows and back however the spirit bade me.

Stock doves, Cob Kiln Wood

We've had a few dry days so the paths through Cob Kiln Wood weren't so muddy but were a bit more treacherous: the reassuringly solid dry crust on top had a habit of gliding over the wet mud underneath whenever I put my weight on it. Nearly all the usual local woodland species were present and correct, great spotted woodpecker being the only absentee. A lot more bullfinches than chaffinches, which is becoming a recurring feature this year. A pair of stock doves billed and cooed in the trees in one of the horse paddocks, for some reason they always cheer me up when I see them. I stopped awhile to watch a pair of long-tailed tits collecting moss and spiders' webs for a nest they were obviously constructing in a bramble patch. Fifty yards further down the path another pair were collecting webs off the legs of one of the electricity pylons. Their nest site was less obvious, somewhere in a mass of brambles and ivy just within a line of alder trees.

I walked on and joined the meadows by the river. Robins and wrens sang from the scrub and chaffinches and greenfinches sang from the trees along the margins. Every alder or birch seemed to have either a handful of goldfinches or a pair of blue tits in it. A heron flew low over, wheeled round and headed for the paddocks by the brook. The further I walked the worse the path got, the mud chopped deep by horses' hooves and at times only passable by using the bases of trees as stepping stones. It was good practice for the next time I'm able to visit Elton Reservoir.

Pond by Urmston Beach

Just before the path reaches Urmston Beach (a flattering name for a bit of litter-strewn shingle on a bend of the river) there's a deep bowl thickly filled with willows, reeds and muddy water. It's one of those uncomely places I always associate with water rails, willow tits and warblers, today it was home to a moorhen and a pair of mallards. A treecreeper landed on a tree by the path and obligingly posed for photos.

From entering Cob Kiln Wood down to here I'd seen four people. There were a few kids playing on the beach and a couple of people on bikes headed off towards Urmston Cemetery. As the afternoon progressed the paths got slightly busier but nowhere near as bad as it gets over by the water parks.

River Mersey
The spit below the distant electricity pylon is Urmston Beach.

I walked down the path that follows the meanders of the river. The river should be beautiful here but the waterside willows trap all the passing rubbish. A distressing number of the objects were offerings to the Dog Shit Fairy in their unlovely gift wrappings. Ironically, there's nearly always a pair of grey wagtails fussing about the worst of the mess and today was no exception. It won't be long before we start seeing sand martins along this stretch, they nest in the banks on the Cheshire side of the river.

I walked down to the farm track and back along the path by Old Eea Brook. A great spotted woodpecker drummed in the trees by the barn in the next field. A little further on I was puzzled by a loud song coming from the treetops behind the barn: a 1,2,3 1,1 call that had the clear notes of a bunting but wasn't any bunting I know. The general rule of thumb is that any small bird noise you don't know is a great tit proved true again: I eventually caught the singing male in the act. His mate, calling back from a hawthorn on the field edge, had an unusual — if less baffling — call like the rattle of pebbles in a tin can.

Urmston Meadows

I decided to walk round Urmston Meadows proper. Three buzzards wheeled overhead, calling all the while. Over in the dip in the middle of the hay meadow two herons hunted frogs and squabbled over the winnings. A blackcap sang from the scrub amongst the trees alongside Riverside Drive.

Then a walk down Chassen Road to Davyhulme and thence home for a pot of tea.