Mosses

Buzzard, Chat Moss

I spent the morning running errands so it was lunchtime when I got the train to Irlam and set off for a walk up Astley Road and over Chat Moss.

Astley Road

The hedgerows at the bottom of Astley Road were stiff with goldfinches. Each bush had three or four goldfinches in it, the alders near the Jack Russell's gate held a flock of a dozen. A mixed tit flock, mostly blue tits and great tits, bounced through the hedgerows with a lot of chaffinches and greenfinches in tow. A couple of goldcrests provided the first of this year's There Was A Warbler Here A Moment Ago photos. Just after the Jack Russell's gate a trio of bullfinches — two males and a female — flew down and started disbudding the wayside birches.

Bullfinch, Irlam Moss

Just the one kestrel down here today, sitting on a telegraph wire with a couple of woodpigeons. I walked the whole length of the road without seeing a single pied wagtail, a first for me.

The hedges were a lot quieter on the stretch beyond the motorway, robins and a couple of blue tits. A buzzard was digging for worms in one of the horse paddocks, rising to perch on a fencepost to watch me safely go by before going back down to its hunting.

I had quarter of an hour's wander round Little Woolden Moss, which was very quiet. The usual family of carrion crows were bouncing round over beyond the corner of Mosslands Farm and I irritated a wren by walking past when it was feeding in the heather by the path.

It was late afternoon as I started walking down Twelve Yards Road so the small birds were coming in to roost while the carrion crows, magpies and woodpigeons got stuck into the last scoff of the day. A couple of low-flying paragliders put up a few dozen lapwings from one of the wet fields. Once the disturbance had passed the lapwings rejoined the fifty or so woodpigeons that hadn't batted an eyelid. The hundred or more chaffinches in the hawthorn trees were accompanied by three bramblings and a few greenfinches. There were more greenfinches with the mixed flock of yellowhammers and reed buntings a hundred yards down the road. Out in the stubble fields a skylark and a couple of snipe were heard but not seen.

Twelve Yards Road

I had another twilit walk down Cutnook Lane. The blue tits and great tits settling down in the hedgerows with musical accompaniment by wrens and robins were par for the course. The cormorants flying in low for a dusk raid on the fishery were a bit more of a surprise.

Along Cutnook Lane