High Rid Reservoir

Black-necked grebe

It was too warm for anything strenuous so I had an hour's wander round High Rid Reservoir. There were reports that last week's juvenile black-necked grebe was still around and it seemed rude not to have a look for it. And the reservoir's small enough to give a fighting chance of getting a photo of it.

Fall Birch Lane

I walked up Fall Birch Lane, pausing only to climb over a fallen sallow tree. It was warm, there literally wasn't a cloud in the sky and the complete absence of any over flying hirundines was pretty conspicuous.

Lesser black-backs

When I arrived at the reservoir I experienced the usual mixture of elation and despair when faced with a raft of mixed large gulls this time of year. Luckily for me they were nearly all lesser black-backs with just a handful of herring gulls and nothing looking out of the ordinary. It was too warm for gull ID brain work. There were almost as many black-headed gulls as lesser black-backs and they were a lot more noisy and active.

High Rid Reservoir

There were a few groups of mallard on the water and a lot more loafing on the sides. There were also a couple of dozen tufted ducks floating around in rafts of five or six birds. And the usual dabchicks bobbing round like corks on a mill pond.

Dabchick

It took me a few minutes to find the black-necked grebe. It was on the opposite side of the reservoir so I took a couple of record shots while I had the light behind me. It kept disappearing, a neat trick on such a small, open body of water. When it dived it stayed underwater for quite a lot longer than the dabchicks did and it had a habit of bobbing back up again behind one or other of the black-headed gulls.

Black-necked grebe

Black-necked grebe diving

Black-necked grebe

I walked round to the other side of the reservoir so, naturally, the grebe floated over to where I'd started. It took a while to find a place where I could get a fair-ish mid-distance shot of the bird in decent modelling light.

Old Hall Clough

I took the path that leads over to Old Hall Lane. It was still only lunchtime so I considered walking up to Chorley Old Road and perhaps going on to see if the black redstarts were on Winter Hill. Then I told myself to go boil my head. Instead I found a path that leads down Old Hall Clough and on to Chorley New Road. This year I seem to be doing a lot of finding surprisingly nice little walks round Horwich. The highlight was a mixed tit flock that was mainly made up of coal tits.

I got the 575 bus to Wigan, the idea being to have a potter round Pennington Flash or Orrell Water Park depending on the buses. As I arrived at Wigan Bus Station the buses to Leigh and Orrell pulled out. There's nothing to commend a twenty minute wait at Wigan Bus Station so I went home. Via Ormskirk and Southport like you do.