Mersey Valley

Great crested grebe and chick, Chorlton Water Park

It had been a tough old night's sleep so I decided against an early start for a day out.

The garden warbler's still singing from somewhere deep in the sycamores on the railway embankment. This year's bird is a nice easy garden warbler to identify for once, this is a bird with a song entirely unlike a blackcap once you get your ear in at the beginning of the season. I've been seeing the pair of great tits in the garden over the weekend, today I finally spotted a couple of youngsters with them. Oddly enough I've still not seen any baby spadgers though there are quite a few occupied nests along the road.

Across the road the gulls have started returning for school lunch breaks. Last week they were nearly all lesser black-backs, probably some of the ones breeding on the flat roofs of the factories in Trafford Park, and a couple of herring gulls. They've been joined this week by a handful of black-headed gulls.

I set off for the lunchtime train into Manchester for today's planned walk. Unfortunately the lunchtime train was cancelled in today's Monday meltdown.

So I scrubbed that and got the bus into Chorlton then walked down onto Hardy Farm where there were magpies and blackbirds aplenty but none of the expected whitethroats in the hawthorns until I got to Jackson's Boat. And for the first time in years there weren't any ring-necked parakeets about Jackson's Boat (the bridge being closed surely being just a coincidence).

Things picked up once I started walking up the river to Chorlton Water Park. A couple of chiffchaffs and a whitethroat sang from the bushes by the tram bridge and there were a couple of blackcaps in the hedgerows by the golf course. Swallows fed low over the river and occasionally dipped down for a drink. Families of Canada geese and mallards loafed and fed close to the banks, the parents keeping an eye out for overexcited spaniels and the like. A heron flew overhead and a buzzard flew over Sale Golf Course.

I reached the stretch opposite the electricity substation where a willow warbler was singing in the trees. A couple of dozen house martins flew in and started feeding over the river, mostly way overhead and never lower than the level of the top bank I was walking on. Two or three sand martins joined in just to make life confusing while half a dozen swifts hawked quite high overhead. I honestly couldn't work out why this short stretch of water was such a honeypot, there didn't seem to be any more insects about than there had been further down.

Whitethroat, Barlow Tip

Barlow Tip was busy with small birds. Chiffchaffs, chaffinches and blackcaps sang in the trees with a couple of blackbirds and a song thrush. There were half a dozen whitethroats scattered about in the hawthorn scrub.

Barlow Tip

Chorlton Water Park was oddly quiet. Even the couple of parakeets that flew overhead were quiet. The usual Canada geese, coots and mute swans were around but there were just a handful of mallards and one pair of tufted ducks. The great crested grebes had a couple of youngsters, each of the adults having one in tow with them.

Reed warbler, Chorlton Water Park

There's a tiny scrap of reeds at the Eastern end of the lake, which turns out to be not so tiny it couldn't hold a singing reed warbler.

As I crossed over the river to Kenworthy Woods a grey wagtail was fly-catching from the bank under the bridge.

Horse chestnut, Kenworthy Woods

Kenworthy Woods was heaving with singing blackbirds and song thrushes and it was quite hard to hear much else over the noise. I spent the best part of an hour aimlessly wandering round to see what was about. There were plenty of wrens, robins and chiffchaffs trying to make themselves heard over the thrushes. A male bullfinch was an elusive patch of red moving through the greenery while a family of long-tailed tits came over to have a look at me. I tried and failed to spot the great spotted woodpecker that took exception to me and I didn't even try to find the pheasant that was calling from the other side of a bamboo thicket.

Kenworthy Woods

I walked through under the motorway and got the 103 bus into Manchester and made my way home. When I got home there were sixty-odd woodpigeons feeding on the school playing fields including a couple of youngsters looking dark and scrawny compared to the well-padded adults.