Flixton

Heron, Dutton's Pond
I don't know if it had a fishing permit

I'd pencilled in Saturday for catching up with my sleep but I was flagging by the end of yesterday's walk and this morning I decided I didn't have the energy for the outing I had planned if the cat woke me before six and over the course of a pot of tea I ditched all the alternative plans until it got to the point where getting past the front gate was looking overambitious. Anyway, nature ran its course, I had a mid-morning nap, woke up feeling like the wreck of the Hesperus, had another cup of tea and got the 256 bus into Flixton for a walk round Wellacre Country Park to try and get my mojo back.

Wellacre Wood

Wellacre Wood was quietly busy. A couple of robins and wrens sang but the rest of the birds quietly went about their business. There was a constant patter as bits of alder catkins dropped to the woodland floor, most of them helped along the way by a flock of goldfinches feeding on them in the treetops. A couple of pairs of long-tailed tits bounced by, stopping to strike poses for the camera and doing a runner whenever the camera got them in focus. They do that a lot, I guess they have to make their own entertainment. The new hawthorn leaves made dense splashes of green in the undergrowth and excellent hiding places for great tits and dunnocks waiting for me to move on out of the way 

There haven't been many black-headed gulls round our way lately, they were made up for by the crowd of them noisily feeding on the sewage works at Irlam Locks.

Jack Lane

The paths into Jack Lane were baked dry with the recent weather but the water levels in the pools and reedbeds looked normally high. Robins and chiffchaffs sang while a moorhen and a water rail shrieked at each other in the reedbed. I could hear a ring-necked parakeet but took ages to find it, finally spotting it low down in a stand of drowned willows by the path by the railway embankment.

Jack Lane

I walked on down to Dutton's Pond. The trees along the embankment were busy with great tits and chaffinches and a couple of chiffchaffs sang from the taller trees. Another warbler flew in and bounced about in a small alder tree without calling or singing. It didn't look like a chiffchaff, its wings were longer and it had a lemon yellow cast to its chest but it was only when it had moved round so I had the sun behind me that I could confidently confirm it was a willow warbler by its pale brown legs. I'll get more confident with the ID later in the season, about the same time as I'll be baffling myself trying to separate blackcaps and garden warblers by small snatches of song.

Dutton's Pond

A couple of pairs of mallards and a pair of moorhens were feeding on Dutton's Pond together with a heron that seemed to have made a point of standing next to a "Members' fishing only" notice.

Buzzard, Fly Ash Hill

I bobbed under the railway onto Fly Ash Hill. The trees by the subway were busy with spadgers and great tits. As I walked up the path I accidentally flushed a buzzard that was perching by the railway line, it flew off towards the locks. 

Rewilding Britain
I'm getting increasingly tetchy about over-dense tree plantings like this on already-established wild places.

There wasn't so much about in the open country on the top of the hill, it's a bit late for meadow pipits and a bit early for whitethroats. Looking over the brow down into the lagoons I could see a couple of mallards and a moorhen and a few magpies flew by. There were more magpies, together with a couple of carrion crows and a pheasant, down in the horse paddocks.

Walking down Fly Ash Hill

I walked down the hill to Merseyview with greenfinches, goldfinches and collared doves singing in the hawthorns and a pair of bullfinches quietly disbudding a wild cherry.

I had a look on the river before going to get my bus back. A pair of mallards and a pair of goosanders loafed on the water by the bridge.

Not the planned outing but a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours.