Pennington Flash

Lapwing

I had a teatime stroll round Pennington Flash, the idea being to get some exercise in the relatively cooler hours before the heatwave kicks in in the latter part of the week. While it was distinctly cooler than at lunchtime it was still warm and I was glad of the long shadows to hide in.

The walk in from St. Helens Road was exceptionally quiet, had a wren not flown across the path I'd have seen nothing. There was a delightful counter to the idiot cyclist of the other day: the first I heard of the family of young cyclists coming up behind me was a tiny voice shouting from fifty yards away: "Ring! Ring! My bell's broken!"

Juvenile lesser black-back

The flash was busy with canoeists and people and dogs splashing round the edges. About a hundred mallards — including a duck with young ducklings — and a similar number of coots congregated at the car park, the Canada geese and black-headed gulls on the spit at Horrocks Hide and a pair of mute swans with their cygnets cruises the water margins hissing at passersby. A diffuse raft of fifty-odd lesser black-backs and a few herring gulls blithely ignored the canoeists. A rather tatty young lesser black-back was trying to make a living pinching food off the ducks in the car park.

Pennington Flash 

The hides were still open despite its being teatime. There were a lot of lapwings with the mallards, coots and Canada geese on the spit. A hundred or so black-headed gulls loafed in the channel at the end of the spit with a few herring gulls and a couple of cormorants.

The walk to the Tom Edmondson Hide was eerily quiet save the calls of a couple of chiffchaffs and some coots on Pengy's pool. It was by pure dumb luck I spotted a reed warbler silently hunting in the reeds.

Pennington Flash 

The selection of ducks at the Tom Edmondson Hide highlighted why this time of year is hard work. Eclipse plumages are tricky enough, add to that a variety of sizes of young ducks with not quite full-grown juvenile mallards having a very gadwall-like look to them. Of course you can always rely on the white and brown speculum on the wings of the gadwalls as an identification feature. Except for the week or so when those feathers have moulted and the new ones aren't showing through yet. The differences in bill shape and colour between a gadwall and a young mallard are subtle and not always wholly convincing.

There were a few teal with the moorhens and lapwings at Ramsdales. The only great crested grebe of the day was cruising around the raft of a dozen tufted ducks in the bight.  

Walking back to St. Helens Road 

After nearly a couple of hours of wandering about I called it quits and headed for the bus on St. Helens Road. The walk back would have been as quiet as the walk in but for a very noisy juvenile sparrowhawk in the treetops.