Dove Stone

By Binn Green car park

It had been raining stair rods all morning and I was getting bored with it so I checked the Met Office app to see if anywhere locally was any better. It was all much the same though with a promise that it would get better by teatime.

So it was that I got the mid-afternoon train into town and went out to Greenfield with a view to seeing if I could find the wood warbler that's set up a singing territory in the car park above Dove Stone Reservoir.

Dove Stone Reservoir and the Chew Valley 

By the time I stepped out of Greenfield Station the weather had calmed down and though there were plenty of dark clouds around none of them looked particularly threatening. I walked down to Holmfirth Road but instead of turning off onto Bank Lane to go down to the reservoir I carried on up the road. I haven't done this before, I wish I had as the views are splendid.

At the bottom of Holmfirth Road there were plenty of song thrushes and great tits singing in the trees. Further up, as the the trees thinned out on the steep slopes grazed by sheep these were replaced by mistle thrushes and coal tits. Blackbirds, robins and especially jackdaws were constant companions. 

Dove Stone Reservoir

The trees thickened up again and chiffchaffs and willow warblers tried to make themselves heard over a singing mistle thrush. It was interesting to watch a nuthatch demonstrating that fossicking about for food works the same way on a moss-covered wall as on a moss-covered tree trunk. (And frustrating because it wouldn't stay still for a photo.)

There's a small conifer wood by the approach to Binn Green car park, and the entry into the Peak District National Park and this is where the wood warbler had been reported. I hadn't realised I'd reached my destination until I heard it singing as I was scanning the trees following a small bird that turned out to be a coal tit. There was about five seconds of song from somewhere in the middle of the wood. At this point I was identifying it by a process of elimination rather than anything more positive, I don't bump into wood warblers often and when I do they're usually quietly feeding up on passage. The bird moved on, the next song was further away, so I carried on to the car park and had a look round from up there.

Looking towards Greenfield Reservoir

There were plenty of chaffinches about and almost as many pheasants as lambs in the field. A few blue tits and coal tits quietly foraged in the trees and a willow warbler sang from somewhere halfway up the steps down to the lane below. I found a seat and did a search on my phone to confirm that what I'd been hearing was a wood warbler. 

I decided that rather than traipsing round the wood trying to find the bird I'd be better off staying put, keeping my ears open and try to track it down by sound. It didn't take many minutes for me to be joined by a singing chaffinch and a couple more willow warblers started singing in the tree canopy. After about five minutes I heard the wood warbler singing again, this time from somewhere near the top of the steps. Could I find it? No I could not. I kept still in the hopes that it might come closer or that I might see it flitting about but no such luck: a few minutes later it was singing from down near the lane. I lingered awhile, then had a bit of a wander but didn't hear it again.

Yeoman Hay Reservoir

I started walking back down Holmfirth Road, pausing only to stop and listen to the wood warbler singing from where I'd been ten minutes earlier. I looked at the weather and looked at the time and decided I wasn't for spending any more time playing peep-oh! with the bird today. 

The reservoir had been barren of birds on the way up, on the way down I noticed a couple of Canada geese and two drake mallards on the margins and an oystercatcher flew across the water.

The mistle thrushes in the field dropping down to Bank Lane included a couple of well-grown spotty youngsters. A nuthatch foraging in the trees at the junction with Bank Lane obviously had mouths to feed.

Rather than getting the train back I walked down to The Clarence and got the 350 bus to Ashton and thence home. I'd had a good couple of hours' easy toddling about in nice scenery in fair weather. The drake mandarin duck I spotted on the canal as we went through Mossley was a bonus.