Stretford

Mistle thrush

It had been a splendid Autumn morning with the garden full of spadgers and different flavours of thrush at the last few berries in the rowan tree. The wren and the robin had a singing competition in the rose bushes while a jackdaw spent a giddy ten minutes cawing down the chimney pot.

This could be one of those "What is this exotic bird" puzzle photos.
It's actually a first-Winter male blackbird with a bit of mud on his beak.

There were three pied wagtails on the school playing field, yet another sign of late Autumn. There was only a dozen black-headed gulls today together with five lesser black-backs and a herring gull. Every day this week there's been one common gull on there, I'm not convinced it's the same one every day.

I'd had my COVID booster and gave it a couple of hours to see if I was going to have any after effects. I seemed to be getting away with it so I set off to take advantage of the good weather promised by both the weather apps on my 'phone. I decided to busk it: if the 256 came first I'd go for a walk round Wellacre Country Park, if it was the 25 then I'd see which bus came along first at the Trafford Centre. Which is how I ended up on the 247 from the Trafford Centre debating whether to get off in Flixton for Wellacre Country Park or carry on down to Carrington for the Moss. As we approached Flixton it started pouring down heavily, so I stayed on the bus and did the weekend shop. Which was just as well as the after-effects hit me in the cooked meat section of the supermarket; I would have hated for it to have spoiled a good afternoon's birdwatching.

Some days we are just the playthings of Fate.