Stretford

Mallard, Stretford Ees
(Mallards and herons have been featuring a lot lately because they've been the only birds keeping still long enough to photograph)

I'd hurt my foot the other day and yesterday's walking round was very painful so I thought I'd test this morning's bit of rough first aid work with a walk over Stretford Meadows. The good news is that it worked: on the level I didn't feel a thing and it was only when I walked up a couple of steep inclined planes it felt at all uncomfortable. This bodes well for the plans for the week.

The beginning of the path by Newcroft Garden Centre was reassuringly muddy, most of the paths over the meadows were in good condition but there's always an exception.

The path best not trod, Stretford Meadows 

A chiffchaff called from the willows by the garden centre and there were great tits and wrens in the trees further along.

There were plenty of birds about on the open meadow. The male kestrel was hunting over his half of the meadow. He favours the scrubby areas on the Western side, the female the open areas to the East, there was no sign of her today. The usual buzzard was soaring high, floating off over towards the river then slowly drifting back again. There was also a steady flow of woodpigeons, carrion crows and jackdaws overhead. Half a dozen magpies were skittering about, mostly feeding around the paths, while a jay was busy planting a future oak forest. 

Stretford Meadows, looking towards Newcroft Road

Stretford Meadows, with Michaelmas daisies 

Small birds were hard to pick up on, a few goldfinches twittered from the hawthorn bushes and a robin sang from the cricket pitch but the rest were quiet, unidentifiable contact calls from deep in the brambles and bracken. A large white was the latest contender for last butterfly of the year (odds on it'll be a red admiral at the end of this month or perhaps even the beginning of November).

I walked down the velodrome beside Kickety Brook, stopping long enough along the way to pick up a couple of mixed tit flocks and rather a lot of magpies. For some reason all of today's elderly boy racers were wearing George Formby skid lids. The kids were a lot more considerate of pedestrian traffic, for which I am extremely grateful.

Heron, Stretford Ees

Stretford Ees was busy with a steady passage of woodpigeons, jackdaws and lesser black-backs overhead and magpies, jays, robins and a chiffchaff in the hedgerows. A flock of goldfinches made a lot of noise in the bushes at the end of Kickety Brook. There wasn't a lot of water in the brook despite the recent weather so the heron that flew in had to hunt in the long grass on the bank and the moorhens joined the mallards on the river out of the way of passing dogs.

I walked over to the river, looked at the procession of dog walkers and cyclists (it was that time on a sunny Sunday afternoon when a walk along the Mersey becomes a shuffle) and decided to call it a day. I walked through the cemetery into Stretford and off home. There were no mistle thrushes to be seen in the cemetery, yet another of their usual haunts drawing a blank. Where have they all gone?