Local patch and Mersey Valley

Grey wagtail, Northenden

The robin's back in the back garden, though it's heard much more than it's seen. Regular visitors to the feeding stations, besides the spadger army, have included the pair of great tits and one of their youngsters, a couple of blue tits and the male coal tit. The dunnocks are usually rummaging round in the fruit bushes and the wrens are more often than not lurking somewhere in the depths of the boysenberries (which need a damned good pruning, the peculiar August weather seems to be just right for them). The long-tailed tits are less regular and limited to hit and run operations and a chiffchaff passed through briefly.

A wander round the local patch was unnervingly quiet, especially for this time of year which should be peak goldfinch season.

• Black-headed Gull 1
• Chiffchaff 1
• Dunnock 1
• Feral Pigeon 12
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 2
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 2
• Magpie 7
• Woodpigeon 23
• Wren 3

I decided to move on, the aim being to bob over to Stockport to have a look at the mandarin ducks at Etherow Country Park but halfway there I thought better of all those bus rides and jumped bus at Fletcher Moss. 

I had a teatime wander round the botanical gardens, which are very nice, and wandered through Stenner Wood to the river. Plenty of blue tits and nuthatches, wrens and robins along the way.

Simon's Bridge over the River Mersey

I walked down the river to Princess Parkway. It's a nice walk but it was fairly quiet bird-wise until I got to Northenden. A couple of young herons chased each other round the motorway bridge stanchions while an adult lurked on the weir in the company of a juvenile moorhen and a grey wagtail and a bunch of mallards loafed on the shingle on the bend.

Heron, Northenden

Once across Palatine Road (the path under the road being closed while builders shore up the bridge) it quietened down again on the river, except for the kingfisher flying off on hunting sallies from its perch on a shopping trolley in the riverbank. There were a couple of mixed tit flocks in the trees along this stretch and the ring-necked parakeets were noisy as they flew over to their pre-roost congregations.

River Mersey, West Didsbury

The sun was well below the trees by the time I was approaching Princess Parkway so I decided to call it a day.  I'd spent the best part of two hours taking a very convoluted way of getting three quarters of a mile down the road from where I started.in the first place on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.