Etherow Country Park

Mandarin, Etherow Country Park

I'd had a long lie-in — not because I was still feeling the aches from Thursday's tramping, I'd managed to manoeuvre the cat into letting me have half the bed and I wanted to savour the advantage — so I decided to do a couple of errands then go over to Etherow Country Park mid-afternoon to say hello to the mandarin ducks and see how Keg Wood was for warblers.

It was a bright, windy day and whenever the sun went behind a cloud it felt like the temperature dropped ten degrees. I'd timed my arrival well: the car park was half-empty and the visitor centre cafe was crammed so the paths were fairly quiet.

Unpaired drake mandarins were scattered all about the park, a couple even joining the mallards and geese by the visitor centre. I saw half a dozen pairs throughout the entire visit, mostly flying about the higher reaches of the little canal and a pair on the river. The rest of the females were obviously busy. I know there are a hell of a lot of trees in the woods but I still marvel that there are enough holes big enough for so many mandarin duck nests.

A couple of pairs of mallards had small ducklings. I was struck by how few nesting coots there are this year, possibly because the storms removed a lot of cover and washed out a lot of the large debris that serves as nest platforms.

A couple of chiffchaffs and blackcaps sang down near the visitor centre, another chiffchaff and a willow warbler sang near the weir.

I looked in vain for dippers on the river. The roof has caved in on their old nest site on the weir. The stone roof had cracked and started leaking last year, it's now split in two and knocked the surrounding stones out in the process. They'll have found somewhere a lot less observable. 

Mandarin, Etherow Country Park

I'm trying to do more photos of birds sitting within their landscape, helped quite a bit by so many of them choosing to keep their distance.

Jay, Keg Wood

I had a very brief nosy in Ernocroft Wood where robins, blackbirds and a blackcap sang and carrion crows and woodpigeons clattered about the treetops.

The entrance to Keg Wood was noisy with robins, blackbirds and chiffchaffs. It got quieter further in though there were still plenty of birds about, mostly too busy foraging for hungry mouths to make a lot of noise about it. Nuthatches, goldfinches and jays were kicking about, the jays being unusually conspicuous but silent. This time of year jays are usually invisible screams in the greenery.

Keg Wood

Most of the warblers were chiffchaffs, half a dozen blackcaps battled it out in the hawthorns on the way to the warden's lodge and a willow warbler sang by one of the clearings.

I stopped and had a sit down in the bus shelter effort at Sunny Corner for a drink. A couple of pairs of blue tits and great tits came down to see if I was putting anything out on the bird table and left in disgust when I didn't, not before making sure I felt guilty about my delinquency. I noticed there were more nest boxes about, including a triangular communal one that seemed designed for starlings.

Bluebells, Keg Wood

I walked baclk, enjoying the sight and smell of the bluebells. A few of the riverside trees had fallen where the storms had undermined the banks, opening up a view of the river as it snakes round Keg Pool.

Mandarins, Etherow Country Park

I had another scan of the river by the weir and found a pair of mandarins and a grey wagtail. Hope springs eternal, though, so I kept looking all the way back down to the visitor centre.

River Etherow

Etherow Country Park, Ernocroft Wood on  the right. The river's down the steep bank between the path and the wood.