Flixton

Jack Lane 

A Sunday afternoon potter round Wellacre Country Park seemed in order. It was a nice day, if a bit windy, it was unequivocally Autumnal (despite the appearance of a baby spadger on the bird feeders this morning) and I could do with a little exercise. So I got the 256 into Flixton and set off through Wellacre Wood.

The wood was quiet, most of the small bird noises being the creaks and squeaks of trees in the wind or the angry churrs of squirrels impatient for me to beggar off and stop treading on the fallen beech mast. A very loose mixed tit flock worked its way through the undergrowth silent but for the very occasional contact call of the long-tailed tit family in the hawthorns. A couple of robins kept busy and a chiffchaff gleaned from the treetops. 

Wellacre Wood 

The usual flock of house sparrows were very active in the hawthorn hedges on Jack Lane. The reserve was fairly quiet, chiffchaffs being the only remaining warblers and the robins, dunnocks and goldfinches being too busy to make much noise about it. A buzzard soared high overhead and there was a steady movement of black-headed gulls between the fields and the water treatment works by Irlam Locks. There was some water back in the pools but they were still not a lot more than muddy puddles.

Jack Lane 

I thought they'd started running the Pacer trains again, perhaps special excursions for people nostalgic for a bloody awful travelling experience. It turned out to be a young raven groaning and croaking as it flew low over the line following it down towards Irlam. Jays flitted over the line to bury acorns from Fly Ash Hill in the paddocks by Dutton's Pond.

I'm trying to avoid using the word "quiet" again so suffice it to say there were just three moorhens on Dutton's Pond. A migrant hawker patrolled the surrounding sycamores.

Dutton's Pond 

The mixed tit flock in the trees by the railway line on Fly Ash Hill was vocal but only the great tits were for coming out into the open. I tried in vain to hear or see any willow tits. Chaffinches called in the hawthorns out in the open and a red admiral did the rounds of the remaining blackberries.

I'd stretched the walk out to a couple of hours but I had places to be and a Sunday bus service so I didn't linger by the river, only noting the woodpigeons and chiffchaffs in the trees in the banks.

Wellacre Country Park