Mosses

Swallows and house martin (far left), Chat Moss

The sparrow factory continues to roll out new baby spadgers. I'll have to wait until after the Autumn fall to get a better idea of how many mouths I've been feeding.

It was a nice day so I decided on a walk across the Salford mosses from Irlam to Glazebury. I got the train to Irlam and pottered down to Astley Road.

Kestrel, Irlam Moss
Most birds taking exception to the camera take flight. This one turned its back on me.

Astley Road was dead quiet, save for woodpigeons. Even the goldfinches were going about their business quietly. The wind and rain the other day had flattened lines of ripe oats in the fields so I had hopes of seeing birds taking advantage of a free feed but even the woodpigeons didn't seem to be interested. A couple of chaffinches called in the trees and a family of great tits worked their way through the hedgerows. A distant shape landing on a fence post a couple of fields away was the only yellowhammer of the day. A couple of kestrels perched on the telephone lines by the road. One flew off when it saw me, the other made a great show of completely ignoring me.

Contrary to usual form, things picked up a lot once I'd gone over the motorway and set off for Four Lanes End. Flocks of swallows hawked low over the turf fields, the grass dotted with pied wagtails and carrion crows. A flock of a couple of dozen goldfinches flitted between the hedgerows and the thistles in the field margins. And the swallows hawking over the yard at Trophy Lawn Turf were joined by a couple of dozen house martins and a handful of swifts. At Four Lanes End the swallows were joined by a few house martins and a dozen sand martins. The season's definitely turning.

Walking down towards Little Woolden Moss from Four Lanes End I was suddenly struck by how many dragonflies were patrolling the verges on the path. Most were black darters, the males shining blue-black in the sunlight. There were a few common darters about but the most numerous red dragonflies were the male ruddy darters that spent half their time sunbathing on the path.

Male ruddy darter, Chat Moss

Little Woolden Moss was very quiet of birds. A couple of willow warblers called from the alders and one even assayed a bit of song but the meadow pipits and linnets stayed undercover and called once in a while to show they hadn't completely gone away. Out on the water the only birds were a couple of families of pied wagtails, the youngsters in that phase of plumage where they have yellow faces and look a bit short-tailed. (I didn't see any yellow wagtails today). Overhead there was a steady passage of woodpigeons.

Female common darter (I think), Little Woolden Moss

The site was heaving with dragonflies. A handful of brown hawkers heaved themselves around like clockwork helicopters. I lost count of the number of darters, black, common or ruddy. There seemed to be one on lookout on every fencepost and no substantial patch of heather was without one or two on patrol.

Kestrel power-diving, Little Woolden Moss

There were less spectacular numbers of butterflies, though it's always nice to see double figures of small coppers and a passing small heath was a nice surprise.

Little Woolden Moss

The usual kestrel hovered overhead, occasionally diving into a clump of cotton grass and nearly always coming out empty-handed. A buzzard passed by and headed towards Little Woolden Hall. As I reached the path onto Mosslands Farm I thought the buzzard was coming back but it turned out to be a female marsh harrier which did an excellent job of clearing all the woodpigeons out of one of the barley fields.

Small tortoiseshell, Mosslands Farm

The barley had been cut in the fields next to the reserve. A mixed flock of woodpigeons and carrion crows fed on the stubble. The thistles had been cut with the barley but there were still a lot of small tortoiseshells about.

Along Moss Lane

The walk down Moss Lane into Glazebury was fairly quiet, though picturesque. I got the bus into Warrington and thence home.