Pennington Flash

Snipe

A cancelled train put paid to this afternoon's planned wander so I went and had a teatime stroll round Pennington Flash. There was an Autumnal feel to the day with lots of greys and browns about it. The weather was gloomy and muggy and every so often it would start to rain heavily then after a minute or two forget what it was doing and go back to gloomy and muggy.

It's good to see the car park oystercatcher back again.

The path down from St Helens Road, indeed all the woodland paths, was fairly quiet with odd noises as family parties of great tits and blue tits moved through the undergrowth, the clattering of woodpigeons in the treetops and the occasional bit of song from robins. Here and there a wren would scold or a chiffchaff call as I passed by. There was literally nothing on the brook and I couldn't see any fish either.

Things changed at the car park with the usual mass of Canada geese, mallards and black-headed gulls on the cadge. There were hundreds of coots on the flash and a raft of fifty or more lesser black-backs with a few herring gulls and a couple of great black-backs. It didn't take long to find a few great crested grebes and tufted ducks, a bit longer to find a couple of cormorants. Most of the mute swans, thirty or so, were over on the sailing club end of the flash.

From the Horrocks Hide 

At first sight the spit at the Horrocks Hide was dead quiet, mainly because it was bone dry. All the action was going on out on the tip of the spit half-hidden by vegetation. A dozen juvenile herring gulls loafed with a couple of cormorants, a few dozen black-headed gulls squabbled and coots, teal and gadwall dozed and fed on the bight.

Teal

There were more teal, and a couple of shovelers, on the pool opposite the Tom Edmondson Hide. The pool at the hide was relatively quiet, just half a dozen gadwall and a couple of very noisy chiffchaffs.

Green sandpiper and snipe

Snipe

There was more water on the Ramsdales scrape than the last time I visited, just a couple of shallow pools but enough for a dozen teal to dabble in. Four juvenile snipe split their time between dozing and feeding, feeding when it rained and dozing off when it stopped. A green sandpiper kept busy throughout, it's been a while since I've seen one here. A couple of dozen tufted ducks congregated in this corner of the bight with half a dozen great crested grebes. The water in the pool was too shallow for dabchicks and they're not fond of being on the open flash, they were probably on one of the little ponds away from the paths.

Mute swan cygnets

Mute swan

Pengy's Pool hosted a large family of mute swans, the cygnets now at that age where they hang about in a gang away from their parents. A couple of dozen gadwall dabbled by the reeds.

By the Bunting Hide 

The Bunting Hide was dead quiet with just a magpie sitting in a tree. There had been an outbreak of bird flu here this Summer so all the feeding stations have been taken down as a precaution.

Gadwall, teal, wigeon, shoveler and mallard

The Teal Hide, on the other hand, was busy despite the pool being half its usual size. There were a couple of dozen gadwall, a few mallards and half a dozen shovelers; three wigeons brought a touch of Autumn to the scene. All the drakes other than the wigeons were in those various stages of coming out of eclipse which make life difficult for people just starting out birdwatching. The wigeons were still in gingerbread eclipse plumage and will be for a few weeks yet.

Summer's not entirely gone: goldfinches were still feeding noisy youngsters in the car park willows as I started out home.