Stalybridge

Goosander

Purely on a whim, I thought I'd visit Stalybridge Country Park. It's one of those places I keep noticing on the map when I'm going past but never get round to visiting. The weather looked a lot iffy for any concentrated birdwatching but would probably be OK for a reconnaissance mission like this.

I got off the train at Stalybridge and got the 348 Carrbrook bus as far as Millbrook, getting off at the Cross Street stop then walking back down Huddersfield Road to the entrance to the country park.

Stalybridge Country Park

For all that the first hundred yards or so of the park is a narrow tongue between two streets of houses it contrives to look very rural, even going so far as having a babbling brook. I'd hardly taken ten steps when I was surrounded by a large mixed tit flock working its way through the large trees by the path. The great tits were the most vocal, the blue tits and coal tits were very busy but very quiet, and the goldcrests and nuthatches were silent. I spent ten minutes trying, and failing, to get a photo of the goldcrest in the bush by my side before giving up and being just as unsuccessful with a nuthatch in the tree in front of me. All the while I was failing my paparazzo badge a bunch of goldfinches were twittering in the treetops.

Stalybridge Country Park

I crossed the brook by a little pool with a moorhen on it and followed the path round and up a flight of steps. The wind was blowing hard and cold and the bright cloudy day of ten minutes ago was now a hailstorm. 

Stalybridge Country Park

I followed the path along and met a larger pool. A couple of dozen Canada geese lingered over on the far side. A dozen mallards and a couple of farmyard ducks spotted me and headed my way. I made it clear I hadn't any food on me but they weren't convinced. Out in the middle of the water there was just a single redhead goosander.

Goosander

As I walked towards Walkerwood Reservoir the weather turned to sleet, which made the already muddy paths the more slippery. I decided to call it a day and turned back, past the big pool and down the path to Besom Lane, bumping into a flock of magpies and a noisy male bullfinch feeding in an ash tree.

 I'd had the best part of an hour's wander and got a feel for the place, which was the aim of the exercise. It's definitely someplace I need to come back to in better weather, probably the latter half of next month when the first of the Spring migrants should be starting to trickle in.