Rainy day thoughts

Ashton Canal at Guide Bridge

After twenty-two years of being a siskin desert suddenly we are awash with them. I opened the bedroom curtain to see a flock of nine siskins fly into the sycamores on the railway embankment before flying off in the direction of the alders across the road. A couple of hours later a flock of fifteen birds, which might or might not have included the original nine, flew in and did the same. I don't know if this is a passage of birds feeding up before moving uphill for the Summer or if there's been a failure in the alders in their usual haunts in the Mersey Valley. I haven't seen a lack of alder cones when I've been out and about but I don't know whether what's in them is worth the eating.

The magpies seem to be favouring their usual nest in the top of the ornamental pear across the road. This has attracted the attention of a couple of the rooks which visit occasionally to steal freshly-laid sticks. I suspect this was what was happening last year in the tree down the road when the crows started nest-building and gave up on it. I don't think there's any predatory or territorial motive to this behaviour, I think it's rooks demonstrating they can be dicks just the same as any other corvid. The whole family seems to have what used to be euphemistically described as a robust sense of humour.

I had another look at the weather, which promptly got wetter. I decided not to go for the planned walk, better to let my boots finish drying. Instead I decided to do a bit of reconnaissance. I'd seen a few mentions of the green walkway between Chorlton and Gorton (one of the railway lines Doctor Beeching did away with) and then I saw a recommendation of Debdale Park and the Gorton Reservoirs as a decent walk. I don't know Gorton at all so I thought I'd take the opportunity of a grubby sort of day to do a dummy run at it. And while I was that side of Manchester I thought I'd have a look at the state of the towpath on the Ashton Canal at Guide Bridge.

I got the Rose Hill Marple train from Piccadilly and got off at Guide Bridge. I had twenty minutes to wait for the train to Glossop (I could have waited for it at Piccadilly but this isn't my idea of fun). This gave me plenty of time to nip down to the canal to see what the walking's like. Turns out the towpath's in very good nick and even though it's a pretty industrial landscape there was plenty of birdlife in the shrubs growing along the opposite bank. Even in the pouring rain goldfinches and blue tits were busy courting and robins, blackbirds and dunnocks sang from the buddleias. Pairs of Canada geese had set up territories a hundred paces apart and three drake mallards were vying for the attention of one rather bored duck.

I got the train to Hattersley, purely because the bus stop's immediately outside and the 201 to Manchester runs every twelve minutes and goes through Gorton. And it turns out that a trip to the Gorton Reservoirs is a piece of cake so I've added them to my "To be visited" list.

Along the way I accidentally found Redgate Recycling, a site where not a week goes by without an unusual gull being reported and Caspian gulls in the plural seem to be quite regular. There was no great skill on my part in the finding: I was looking out of the bus window, saw fifty-odd gulls sitting on a rooftop, wondered what that was about then noticed the road sign as we passed. As far as I could see all the gulls were black-headed or herring gulls. I'll bring my bins next time.