Northwich flashes

Treecreeper, Neumann's Flash

It was one of those days where if I hadn't been and bought the train ticket I'd have given up and gone home: there was a bit of a meltdown on the train services due to an incident between Piccadilly and Stockport (I hope not a fatal one). Anyway, it was half twelve before I was finally off on the train to Northwich. The blue-winged teal had reappeared at Neumann's Flash over the weekend so I thought I'd give it a go, I've not seen one in this country.

Neumann's Flash

The heavy rain of the morning had given way to wet dreich. I walked from Northwich Station and up Warrington Old Road to Ashton Flash. There were half a dozen mallards, a teal and a moorhen on Witton Brook as I crossed the bridge. Bobbing up to the path round Ashton's Flash I bumped into the first of the day's mixed tit flocks: a dozen long-tailed tits, a few blue tits and one or two great tits. The mallards and black-headed gulls on the water were heard rather more often than seen, there's still enough foliage on the trees and scrubs to hide behind.

I walked along the bund between Ashton's and Neumann's. The blue-winged teal had been reported early today as being somewhere on the Southwest corner of Neumann's Flash, visible from Pod's Hide, the one on the end of the little path poking into the reedbeds by this bund. Rather than going straight to that hide, which would be packed, I nipped through the birch trees and looked out over this corner from the fence by the reeds.

I'd been hearing wigeons and teal whistling from the flash as I walked along the bund. I could see the wigeons easily enough in the murky light: a couple of dozen were out on the water with rafts of coots, shovelers and tufted ducks. A herd of Canada geese were noisy in the Southeast corner of flash and mute swans were dotted about. The teals were harder to find from this position: a dozen of them were scattered around a small bight largely obscured by reeds. I made the mistake of starting by looking for an odd-looking teal: it's October, the males are coming out of eclipse, there's no shortage of odd-looking teal. Luckily, enough of them decided to fly around showing entirely common teal brown wing coverts to shake me out of that mistake and get on with the business of looking round to see what there was. A couple of moorhens walked out of the reeds, a Cetti's warbler sang from the reeds just to my right then flew over to the reeds the moorhens vacated and a couple of gadwalls drifted into view.

I wandered down towards Pod's Hide for a better view of that bight. I didn't go to the hide ("COVID city" as a passing birder called it), staying out in the open near the beginning of the path. A bunch of mallards dabbled by the path, a pair of dabchicks hinneyed at each other and a migrant hawker became the latest candidate for latest dragonfly of the year. I had a better view of the bight and I could see the ducks there far better despite the gloom. There were more shoveler than I'd reckoned on and a few more gadwall. The teals kept dabbling in and out of the reed edges. One sat on its own on the bank, a darker looking teal with a pale face. Which could just be a dark teal with a pale face, they do happen. I got a slightly better look at it when it left the bank and out of the shadows but it was still inconclusive. Had the light been better I might have seen something that would have helped but the evidence to hand couldn't convincingly be anything other than a common teal. I had another scan round — it wouldn't be the first time I've spent ages looking at a potential target bird only to find the real one twenty yards away. No luck. Going back, probably the same bird I'd been staring at before was definitely a common teal.

?Teal (middle) and shovelers, Neumann's Flash

Shoveler and teal, possibly the same bird as above, Neumann's Flash

I gave it up and decided to move on. A flock of more than a dozen lesser redpolls flew over, twittering all the while. This was one of those "Goldfinches, no they're not, they're linnets, no they're not, what are they then?" identifications until they came close enough for their short-tailed shape and their light flight calls to be obvious. As I walked to the end of the bund I bumped into a couple of linnets twittering in the treetops and a charm of goldfinches bouncing round in the waterside birches and alders.

I bumped into another couple of mixed tit flocks as I walked round the flash. The second was a bit of an accident: I'd been hearing a treecreeper but couldn't see it and while I was looking I noticed the trees and bushes behind the hawthorns by the path were thick with long-tailed tits, blue tits, coal tits and great tits. The treecreeper was feeding knee-high in the hawthorn I was standing by, it was only as I glanced down at my notebook I noticed it.

Spindle berries, Neumann's Flash

The scrub at the Northeastern corner of the flash included a stand of spindle trees spectacularly covered in berries.

The rest of the walk round was pretty uneventful bar a couple more singing Cetti's warblers, including one still in training. I'd had a good couple of hours and the weather could have been a lot worse. On a whim I walked into the town centre and got the bus to Warrington and thence the train home, just in case the trains through Stockport were still a bit iffy.