Wellacre Country Park

Wellacre Wood 

For reasons that escape me we haven't had any trains on our line since the strikes were called off on Friday. I had made plans for this being a strike day but with it being a wet and gloomy morning and with me being in a wet and gloomy mood I took advantage of the cat's going out to her latrine to get two hours' untrampled sleep.

It was a great effort to drag myself out and over to Flixton for a mid-afternoon wander round Wellacre Country Park, getting the 256 bus and then joining the woods via the footpath by Delamere School.

I'd hoped to have timed it right for catching small birds actively feeding up before roosting but I got the impression the gloomy weather had persuaded them to go to bed early. The ring-necked parakeets calling from the trees on the other side of the school definitely seemed to have already settled and only the carrion crows and magpies were still feeding on the ground.

Starlings, Irlam Locks

Black-headed gulls started to drift overhead towards Irlam Locks to roost. Walking past the fields towards Jack Lane there were still a few crows and magpies feeding on the grass with a couple of woodpigeons. Woodpigeons have been thin on the ground the past week, I've no idea why. Starlings had started to mass on the electricity pylons, three or four loose flocks of fifty to a hundred birds rather than one big flock, every so often a flock would take flight, wheel round and settle back down on the wires.

Peregrine, Irlam Locks

I walked down the lane to the canal. More black-headed gulls were milling about and pigeons settled down for the night on the lock buildings. There was a sudden rattle of alarm calls from dunnocks, magpies and carrion crows then a dead silence. The cause was apparent when a female peregrine flew overhead and over to the locks. As she passed over the stables she was mobbed by a wren which saw her off its territory then disappeared back into the hedgerow. The peregrine wheeled around and headed back over the railway over the lagoons before coming back again, flying low overhead and off towards Irlam. Not for the first time, and not for the last time today, autofocus was not my friend when trying to photograph fast-moving birds of prey flying close overhead in poor light. You'd think I'd know to immediately switch over to manual by now but I don't.

I spent a while having a wander round Jack Lane. It felt a bit barren at first: the reedbeds and ponds were abandoned but the hedgerows were busier, especially with squirrels. Wrens, robins and dunnocks ticked their displeasure as I walked past. One wren on the railway embankment was singing. I can only think it was a youngster because it was singing the right notes but it was singing the pieces backwards with the opening loud burst coming at the end. 

Jack Lane 

Bullfinches topped up on ash keys while blackbirds gathered to pick the last berries from the hawthorns. As I walked down the path by the embankment in the setting sun a small flock of four siskins flew down from the trackside trees and into the scrub by the reedbed. As I approached the end of the nature reserve a buzzard flew from the embankment over the fields and into Wellacre Wood.

Buzzard, Jack Lane

Wellacre Country Park 

Dutton's Pond 

The sun set as I got to Dutton's Pond and the mallards and moorhens were quietly settling down for a doze. Any sense of peace was shattered by two magpies having a row with a jay in the trees opposite.

I had a quick twilight walk across Fly Ash Hill, meeting some robins, blackbirds and carrion crows along the way, then headed off for the bus back into Stretford and went home.

A twilit mallard bids you goodnight