Windermere

Lake Windermere

There had been a bit of a meltdown on the rail services of Manchester this morning so I missed the intended train and had got as far as Plan D by the time I got onto the late-running Blackpool train. That plan involved getting a bus over to Banks via Hesketh from Preston but the further North we got the foggier it got so I wondered how much I'd be seeing over the saltmarsh. Arriving at Preston I noticed there wasn't a long wait for the train to Windermere. This journey's been on the list since lockdown was lifted in April but I couldn't get the train connections to work so I postponed Plan D and headed for the lakes instead.

The fog cleared as we left Preston but it was still a bit grim with lots of low, dark cloud out there. I whiled away the journey counting woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows and making best-guess estimates of the flocks of rooks and black-headed gulls on the farmland of Lancashire. Every so often we'd slow down enough for me to be able to spot a robin in a trackside hawthorn or pick out the common gulls in a black-headed crowd in a ploughed field. Coming into Lancaster there were fewer Canada geese and mallards on the canal than there were yesterday.

It seemed odd to be steaming past Carnforth for a change. The field on the other side of the line by Pine Lake had a flock of a couple of hundred black-headed gulls feeding on it.

We arrived at Windermere to a chorus of dozens of jackdaws in the trees by the station. I walked down to the lake at Bowness, which to be honest is a pretty boring trek unless you're shopping for souvenirs. It struck me how quiet the trees and gardens would be without the jackdaws, I'd be seeing and hearing a lot more birdlife walking the same length of street back home. I'd got to the Baddeley clock tower, which marks the boundary between Windermere and Bowness before I met the first robin and blackbird.

Bowness Jetty

I walked down to the lake. Black-headed gulls, pigeons and Canada geese were busy mugging tourists while the mallards and mute swans pretended they were better than that. Another flock of Canada geese were grazing on the opposite side of the promenade with a couple of pied wagtails. Out in Bowness Bay a couple of dozen cormorants hung themselves out to dry on the dead trees on one of the islands.

There wasn't a lot of daylight left so I got back into Windermere for the four o'clock train home. Ironically, the small birds I hadn't been seeing or hearing on my walk out were all settling in to roost by the station: a couple of robins, a wren, a dunnock, a couple of blackbirds and a coal tit. The journey through twilight until it all went dark at Kendal came up with a few jackdaws and magpies going to roost but nothing owly over the fields.

Just outside Staveley, from the train

Not the planned day out and the birdwatching wasn't overly productive but it gave the cat a few hours' peace and quiet and I enjoyed the scenery.