Rainy day

Spadgers

Any plans I may have had for going birdwatching today had a bucket of water very effectively poured over them. Me and the cat stared out of the window as the spadgers and starlings made mad sorties out of the shelter of the bushes to the feeders, fed and squabbled for ten minutes then fled back undercover. The titmice were a bit less mard about the weather and the coal tits even found time to top up their caches somewhere or other on the railway embankment. The weather's been a bit too mild to bring the goldcrests in to the feeders but it was wet enough for one to seek more sheltered forage in the blackcurrant bushes today.

• Blackbird 2
• Blue Tit 3
• Coal Tit 2
• Goldcrest 1
• Goldfinch 4
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 29
• Jackdaw 2
• Long-tailed Tit 1
• Magpie 2
• Robin 1
• Starling 23
• Woodpigeon 4

Out on the school playing field the wind and rain brought in a bumper bundle of gulls. The large gulls were very skittish, taking flight whenever anything much bigger than a jackdaw loomed on the horizon (I've never see a jackdaw loom, I'm sure they must be able to, they're very resourceful characters).

• Black-headed Gull 109
• Carrion Crow 1
• Common Gull 9
• Herring Gull 7
• Jackdaw 10
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 4
• Magpie 4
• Rook 1

By late lunchtime I was getting fidgety so, after checking the weather forecast, I decided to get the train into town and go for a brief wander round a municipal park just for an outing and a bit of exercise. A couple of serendipitous connections in town had me heading out to Buxton for the first time this year. (Side note: the old man's explorer ticket costs £15.90 and lets me ride on any Northern train all day after 9:30 anywhere between Carlisle and Stoke; an off-peak return from Hazel Grove to Buxton with a Senior Railcard is £6.90.)

This time of year most of the birds you're going to see on the line to Buxton are carrion crows, woodpigeons and jackdaws and today was no exception. A couple of singing robins and blackbirds at stations added a bit of variety, as did the Canada geese on the canal at Furness Vale and in fields by Combs Reservoir.

Buxton Pavilion Gardens

I had an hour to kill before the next train back from Buxton so I went for a stroll around the Pavilion Gardens which were still showing the effects of recent heavy rains. There was a flock of Canada geese monopolising one of the pools and I got to wondering if the assorted ducks had decamped for drier grounds when I turned a corner and found them all badgering a couple with a barrel of bird food (literally a barrel, and they were flinging the food out with scoops). Amongst the mallards were a few mandarin ducks, which seemed to be more intent on pecking each other than pecking the bird food, a couple of Muscovy ducks and a few moorhens. The small birds were for going to bed and there was much rustling and cheeping in the undergrowth from great tits, robins and chaffinches.

It should have been a straightforward journey home but some poor devil got hit by a train at Heaton Chapel so after the best part of an hour parked on Stockport Viaduct I just managed to catch the 25 bus home. I'm not going to moan about getting home late, I just hope it wasn't a fatality.

One of those not-really-trying days that still racks up more than a couple of dozen species.