Mersey Valley

Canada geese and farmyard greylag, Chorlton Water Park

There was another bumper bundle of gulls on the school playing field this morning, with half a dozen black-headed gulls with the forty-odd lesser black-backs.

I thought I'd give the antihistamines a workout so I got the 25 bus to Chorlton Park and walked down to Hardy Farm. 

Ringlet, Hardy Farm

We're approaching that bit of Summer where all the photographs will be dragonflies, butterflies and landscapes. Hardy Farm wasn't quiet: there were jackdaws, woodpigeons, whitethroats, wrens and song thrushes aplenty but the challenge was seeing them. At least the flyover greenfinches and goldfinches give you a fighting chance and the swifts were a constant presence. The warm weather had brought the meadow browns and ringlets out to flutter in the grass. The ringlets would be a recurring feature the length of the walk along the Mersey between Jackson's Boat and Chorlton Water Park.

Jackson's Boat 

Talking of Jackson's Boat, the bridge has been repaired so we're back to business as usual along this stretch of the river.

Blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the trees either side of the tram viaduct. I'm losing my ear for garden warblers, I suspect I'm usually identifying them all as blackcaps now. One singing from bushes in the golf course across the river was sufficiently different for me to stop and listen closely and realise what it was.

There was a grey wagtail and a mallard in the river at Jackson's Boat and they proved to be the only birds on the water as I walked upstream. A cormorant flew low over but didn't land and half a dozen sand martins hawked low over the river below the river bank 

Common blue damselfly (female), Barlow Tip

Blue-tailed damselfly, Barlow Tip

There were more chiffchaffs, blackcaps, song thrushes and whitethroats on Barlow Tip and they proved as difficult to see as the families of great tits, blue tits and robins rummaging about in the bushes. There was an abundance of damselflies, the only ones I could identify were the common blue damsels and the blue-tailed damsels.

Chorlton Water Park was phenomenally busy with nearly every inch of open space covered in sunbathers and quite a few people frolicking in the water. There wasn't much about besides Canada geese and coots, even the parakeets stuck to chunnering in the treetops.

Kenworthy Woods 

Kenworthy Woods was considerably quieter: I saw three people in total. It was noisy with birds, a constant soundscape of blackbirds, song thrushes and woodpigeons with backing vocals from chiffchaffs, blackcaps and wrens and occasional riffs from magpies that were otherwise busy eating cherries. 

I walked through the woods and got the 101 to Hough End and got the 25 back home.

I've been worrying about our local swift population, there's only a couple of days when I've seen so much as a handful of them. I was walking down the road later on, getting on for sunset, and was pleased to see fourteen of them hawking over the rooftops. Fingers crossed for them.