Windy day

Black-headed gull, Salford Quays

It was another day of lousy weather. Flood alerts in the Mersey Valley put me off going for a walk there. And I wasn't really in the mood anyway.

Most of the usual suspects had been in the back garden. In fact, at one point I had an embarrassment of woodpigeons. As is becoming usual the great tits were a no-show by lunchtime. They're spending all their time hanging round the station these days and generally turn up late afternoon.

• Blackbird 2
• Blue Tit 3
• Coal Tit 2
• Collared Dove 2
• Goldfinch 3
• House Sparrow 27
• Jackdaw 1
• Long-tailed Tit 1
• Magpie 1
• Robin 1
• Rook 1
• Starling 18
• Woodpigeon 6

It was business back to usual on the school playing field with thirty-odd black-headed gulls, half a dozen herring gulls and a few common gulls.

I was all set for having yet another lazy day so I dragged myself out to have a wander round my local patch. The wind had most of the birds keeping their heads down in the park. The magpies and a few woodpigeons fed on the football pitch, the robins, great tits and blackbirds muttered from what was left of the undergrowth by the footpath after somebody had had at it with a strimmer.

Barton Clough

The old cornfield seemed even quieter at first. A crowd of pigeons flew over, pursued by a sparrowhawk. A few minutes after they'd disappeared a charm of goldfinches rose from the brambles on the United Utilities land and settled in the treetops with a bunch of magpies and the usual pair of crows.

• Black-headed Gull 4
• Blackbird 5
• Blue Tit 3
• Carrion Crow 6
• Chaffinch 2
• Common Gull 2 overhead
• Dunnock 1
• Feral Pigeon 41 overhead
• Goldfinch 29
• Great Tit 2
• Greenfinch 2
• Herring Gull 1 overhead
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 3 overhead
• Magpie 13
• Robin 5
• Sparrowhawk 1
• Starling 30
• Woodpigeon 16
• Wren 1 

Herring gull, Salford Quays

I decided to move on, get the 250 bus and have a look at the Salford Quays gull roost from Wharfside. There were a lot of gulls on very choppy water: a couple of hundred black-headed gulls and about a hundred herring gulls; a couple of dozen each of common gulls and lesser black-backs. I'd promised myself I wasn't doing any serious gullwatching, just going for a walk, so of course a yellow-legged gull insisted on flying across my line of vision.

Yellow-legged gull, , Salford Quays

Lesser black-back and yellow-legged gull, , Salford Quays

Yellow-legged gull, , Salford Quays

There were a couple of sinensis adults amongst the cormorants fishing in the Ship Canal, They were pretty well near full breeding plumage with the black on their heads largely obscured by silver-white plumes. Some of the carbo adults were in full breeding rig, too, with very streaky black and white heads.

Salford Quays

The herd of mute swans was in the Ontario Basin as per usual, together with the mallards and coots that had decided to take shelter from the wind.

I was sort of glad I hadn't plumped for Plan B, which was a walk across the Salford Mosses.