Elton Reservoir

Juvenile goldfinch, Withins Lane

The plan was to have an afternoon out at Martin Mere the plan was. The train services being as the train services are I had a trip out to Elton Reservoir.

The day had started pretty well, with the first coal tit of Autumn joining the crowd of house sparrows on the bird feeders in the back garden.

I'll skip over my attempts to connect with the Southport train to get to Martin Mere, it was wearisome at the time and more so with the retelling. So I went to Elton Reservoir.

Elton Reservoir 

Despite the long, dry weather the water was well higher than it had been on my last visit. Canada geese and mallards loafed about the edges, a couple of large rafts of coots bathed and quarrelled with each other. A few lesser black-backs jockeyed for positions on buoys while black-headed gulls bathed in the deep end. A small duck in midwater puzzled me a while, it was only when I moved round to near the creek that I could confirm it as an eclipse male teal. Half a dozen great crested grebes dotted about took a bit of finding. 

A small flock of sand martins hawked low over the water at the sailing club end, joined by a couple of swallows. A few more swallows and half a dozen house martins were at the Withins end.

Purple loosestrife, Elton Reservoir

There were no waders about, a morning full of dog walkers and runners had probably put any up. A couple of walkers made a point of walking along the shore line to the wader point and getting a bit to close to a family of mute swans.

There were small birds aplenty but they were hard work to connect with, except the noisy families of willow warblers hopping about in the willows by the creek. It felt odd not to see or hear a single blackcap or whitethroat, all the robins were in ninja mood betrayed only the the occasional calls of youngsters.

I had a narrow squeak on one of the blind bends on the path leading away from the creek with a cyclist who thought he was on the velodrome rather than a two foot wide dirt footpath. I expressed my appreciation of his art. It's not as if he was a kid, he was my age if a day and had helmet and goggles and pads on his elbows and knees to keep him safer than any walker he happened to hurtle past. I have a downer on cyclists and it's because of the likes of him and a similar article who scythed through a family group on Stretford Meadows the other day as the father was making sure the youngest child hadn't hurt herself falling off her bike. It's entirely unfair: for every one of these arseholes there's a hundred entirely polite and considerate cyclists but it's the ones that nearly hit you that colour your memory.

A few more coots, mallards and Canada geese loafed about the shallow end of the reservoir over near Withins together with a small raft of tufted ducks.

Radcliffe from Elton Reservoir 

There was a lot of meadow browns and large whites in the grass by the path, and speckled woods aplenty feeding on blackberries in the hedgerows. Common hawkers patrolled the creek while brown hawkers whizzed around the reeds and willows by the reservoir edges.

There was almost nothing on Withins Reservoir, just a heron and a couple of moorhens. There was more happening in the bushes along the feeder stream. A family of willow warblers fossicked away in a pile of willow prunings just an arm's length from me, giving me the opportunity to add to my portfolio of "there was a warbler there a moment ago" photos. I had more luck when they moved into the willows and joined a mixed tit flock — blue tits and long-tailed tits — and a noisy charm of goldfinches. A juvenile blackcap was an unexpected and accidental bonus.

Willow warbler, Withins Reservoir

The common hawkers patrolling the hedgerows were joined by common darters along the feeder stream. 

Another charm of goldfinches, mostly juveniles, fed on the patch of thistles by the farmyard on Withins Lane. The hay in the fields between the farmhouses and the canal was being cut and turned, much to the delight of a flock of jackdaws. A couple of brown hawkers patrolled the hay fields.

Hay-making

There wasn't much doing on the canal and I'd had had a good couple of hours' pottering about so I walked into Radcliffe for the bus. I got the 513 into Farnworth to get the 22 to the Trafford Centre, saving me going into the city centre in the rush hour and only ten minutes longer to get home.