Home thoughts

I took the not especially subtle hints and refilled the bird feeders this morning. Usually this is the cue for all the bird life to be conspicuously absent for a day or two. Not today: two dozen spadgers descended like a plague of locusts before me and the cat were out of the garden. The male coal tit joined them, popping in and out often enough to make it obvious he's laying down a cache. The great tits came along later, the coal tits seem to be carefully avoiding them (not altogether surprising: great tits don't make Winter caches, they steal from coal tits). 

While all this was going on a skein of 105 pink-footed geese flew overhead. Unusually for this time of year they were flying very nearly due West.

I've evidently been underestimating the number of local spadgers: there were two dozen in my back garden when I left the house at lunchtime and there were a couple of dozen more in the front gardens down the street and in the bushes by the station.

The blue-winged teal was back at Neumann's Flash this morning so I decided to bob over for a nosy. I didn't feel too enthusiastic about it: I'm not fond of Saturday twitches and there's not a lot of space for bodies in the hide involved but I thought a lot of people would be over in Yorkshire for the long-toed stint and I've never seen a blue-winged teal in this country. So… I got the packed train into Manchester then realised I wouldn't make the Northwich train however much I jiggled the connections. So I'd be waiting another hour and that train would be packed and…

So I got off at Deansgate and headed off to get the tram to Bury for a wander round Elton Reservoir. Except there were no trams going North from Deansgate/Castlefield. 

So I took the hint and gave up.

It's as well I didn't go over to Northwich today, I'd have been told the teal disappeared at lunchtime. It did the same yesterday. I'll keep an eye out on the news lines tomorrow to see if it plays the same trick. I'll probably go over on Monday on the off-chance, it'll be quieter so if the teal's there it'll be a nice addition to my British list and if it's not it's a nice Autumn walk.