Reservoirs

Approaching Slack Gate

I was meeting friends for an evening do in Rochdale so I thought I'd have a wander round Hollingworth Lake then nip up to Watergrove Reservoir and wander down to Whitworth via Slack Gate thence off to the jolly.

I got the train to Littleborough and walked down to Hollingworth Lake and down Rakewood Road. It was a cloudy Friday but even so I was surprised at how quiet it was. Which made for a nice walk. A flock of seventy-odd lapwings overhead was a good omen.

Hollingworth Lake

There wasn't much out on the open water. A heron fished along the base of the reservoir wall and a few mallards hugged the margins. The water was quite low so there was a lot of damp ground for moorhens and pied wagtails to forage on. The spit over by the hide was twice its usual size, which gave the loafing gulls and lapwings room to space themselves out a bit. There were equal numbers of black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs with a few herring gulls and a couple of common gulls. They were joined by a few mallards and Canada geese and there were a couple of teals dabbling in one of the inlets. A couple of the lesser black-backs looked darker than the others but I decided it was due to the light rather than any chance they may be intermedius birds.

Lesser black-backs and black-headed gull

I turned onto the path that follows the South bank of the lake. It was quieter than usual along the stretch to the hide, just a few woodpigeons and great tits and a couple of rabbits.

I had a nosey from the hide. There were a couple of dozen teal on the pond with half a dozen mallards and a drake wigeon in eclipse plumage. I looked in vain for any waders. I looked over at the gulls, getting confirmation about the light on the lesser black-backs because different birds looks darker from this direction. There were more mallards on the water here and an eclipse drake pintail preened in the shallows.

Pintail

I walked on a bit from the hide and looked back at the gulls from a different angle. One of the young herring gulls on the water looked different to the others, my eye was caught by its big, heavy beak. The other herring gulls and the lesser black-backs had smaller bills and one young herring gull, presumably a small female, had a positively dinky beak. I kept looking round then coming back to it (I find this is a good way of checking whether something that looks strikingly different at first sight really is so strikingly different, if it disappears into the crowd it could have been the light, the angle of view or the activity — or not — of the bird that made it look different). The bill was still big, heavier at the end than at the base. I wasn't for taking any account of the particular shades of grey on its mantle and wings in this light so I looked at the structure of the bird. It looked longer-winged than the others and had a bigger, more rectangular head. A yellow-legged gull, then. A bird coming into second or third Winter plumage I think, I'm not at all confident of ageing this species if it's not a first-Winter or adult.

Hollingworth Lake

There wasn't a lot more besides on the walk round the lake besides a few red admirals and speckled woods in the trees by the café, and there were more people about now the weather had warmed up a bit so I went to get the bus up to Wardle. Then gave up on it when it was quarter of an hour late and walked up through Smithybridge and got the bus to Wardle from Halifax Road.

Watergrove Reservoir

I got off at the chapel and walked up Ramsden Road to Watergrove Reservoir. I'd arrived later than planned because of the missing bus so I limited my walk round the reservoir to the path by the southern bank. There wasn't much out on the water, just a dozen black-headed gulls, a few lesser black-backs and a pair of great crested grebes. There was more activity down by the car park with a flock of jackdaws vying with a gang of magpies and a couple of jays to see who could make the most noise in the trees. A raven flew overhead, cronking all the while and doing barrel rolls in the wind apparently just for the fun of doing it.

It was late afternoon so the walk over the moor to Whitworth was predictably quiet. A few carrion crows and jackdaws fossicked round in the grass, a couple of meadow pipits flew overhead and a small flock of woodpigeons flew into one of the little corpses of conifers and sycamore by the path.

A nice, if a bit quiet, couple of short walks.