Pennines

Red-throated diver, Watergrove Reservoir

There are times when I wonder why I don't do more birdwatching in the Rochdale area. Then there are times like today when I'm reminded why I used to hate that daily commute. Google Maps reckons you can get from my home to Watergrove Reservoir in about one and three quarter hours, but that's dependent on the cross-city connection working just right and reliable buses when you get to Rochdale. Which is why it was two and a half hours before I stepped off the 458 bus at Wardle Chapel and started walking up to Watergrove Reservoir.

I'd arrived at Rochdale Station with plenty of time for the bus so I walked down to the bus station via the Town Hall. There were plenty of magpies and jackdaws about by St. Chad's Church and a good few pigeons and black-headed gulls flying round the town centre. There were a lot of workmen on the Town Hall tower so there was no chance of a peregrine today. Nor was there anything on the river, until I got to the bus station where a flock of pigeons was bathing with some mallards and the local white geese tried to drown out the bus noises.

The 458 bus to Wardle, Hollingworth Lake and Littleborough runs every half hour. Except when it doesn't.

Watergrove Reservoir

I got to the car park at Watergrove Reservoir accompanied by jackdaws, blackbirds and starlings. It was a ridiculously beautiful November day and the stress of the journey in fell away within a few minutes.

Red-throated diver, Watergrove Reservoir

I climbed the steps up to the reservoir edge and had a scan round. The most obvious thing to see was the half a dozen birders with scopes, which suggested that the red-throated diver that was on over the weekend had decided to hang around. Forty or so black-headed gulls loafing on the far bank were accompanied by a few common gulls and a lesser black-back. Out in the middle of the water a flock of a dozen wigeon were preening and dozing while three goosanders drifted out from the sailing club. I was scanning the water down from the goosanders when the red-throated diver bobbed up. In the twenty minutes I watched it it went under for five long dives but none of them looked successful. I've never seen one inland before, a definite treat.

Red-throated diver and goosanders, Watergrove Reservoir

Robin, Watergrove Reservoir

I carried on walking along the path by the reservoir. The hawthorn bushes were full of blackbirds and robins while there were bullfinches and chaffinches in the taller trees. I had a nosy round the plantation of memorial trees which had goldfinches and siskins bouncing round in the birches and alders.

Watergrove Reservoir

I was torn between carrying on round the reservoir then seeing how I got on with the buses at Wardle or having a hike to see if the buses were any more reliable in Whitworth. My knee had been aching badly on the way in so I decided to give it a bit of a workout with a walk up the bridleway that skirts round Dobbin Hill then down into Shore.

Along the bridleway from Watergrove

There wasn't a lot of birdlife up on the bridleway but that didn't matter much as it was a very pleasant walk in stonkingly beautiful scenery. 

Artistically-arranged saplings
(Tap for a closer look)

There's been some tree-planting going on up here which dismayed me at first until I got high up enough to see the pattern. And the beautiful thing is: there isn't a pattern. The trees were obviously laid out by an artist: here and there there were small groups of saplings, sometimes they were connected by strings of plantings that meandered and intertwined like braided streams over the dips and rises, sometimes not. And there were small, open spaces peppered about. Bravo to whoever was responsible.

Along the bridleway to Shore

A few carrion crows fed amongst the sheep while flocks of jackdaws flew overhead. Loud calls alerted me to a skein of fixty-six pink-footed geese flying South high overhead.

The bridleway to Shore

Walking down into Shore the bullocks grazing in a couple of fields were accompanied by more than a hundred and fifty black-headed gulls with a side garnish of rooks, jackdaws and woodpigeons.

On Halifax Road

I walked down into Littleborough and, on a whim, I got the 587 bus to Sowerby Bridge. It's the wrong time of year to be seeing much other than a few carrion crows on the tops, and there wasn't a lot to be seen on Blackstone Edge or Baitings reservoirs but the scenery's great in this weather and there was an excellent sunset on the way home.

The Pennines from the bridleway to Shore