Lazy Sunday

Fieldfares, Wellacre Country Park

Each year's Big Garden Birdwatch is generally the one hour when next to nothing appears in the garden. This year I decided to start the clock when the first dozen spadgers descended on the feeders and the strategy worked much better than I'd hoped, coal tits were the only regulars which didn't turn up.

• Blackbird 2
• Blue tit 2
• Collared dove 1
• Dunnock 2
• Feral pigeon 3
• Goldfinch 1
• Great tit 1
• House sparrow 22
• Jackdaw 1
• Long-tailed tit 3
• Magpie 1
• Robin 2
• Starling 2
• Woodpigeon 2

Over on the school playing field thirty-odd black-headed gulls loafed around with a couple of common gulls and a lesser black-back, by lunchtime a couple of dozen more had turned up with a couple of herring gulls.

I'd had a busy morning thinking about doing some housework and dancing around the cat so I decided to have a walk to lose the smell of floral disinfectant. I got the 255 into Flixton and walked down to Wellacre Country Park, stopping along the way to have a look at the river at Flixton Bridge. At first I thought I'd have to make do with a couple of woodpigeons and a magpie then a drake goosander floated round the bend of the river under a fallen willow. The water's back to normal levels now so I'm hoping the grey wagtails will be coming back soon.

Fly Ash Hill 

Fly Ash Hill was busy with robins and great tits, blackbirds and magpies gorged on ivy berries and woodpigeons and jays clattered about the treetops with a lone ring-necked parakeet. 

Fly Ash Hill 

Dutton's Pond was busy with anglers, which is fair enough, it's their pond. The usual moorhens and mallards loitered. As did a couple of magpies which I suspect have cottoned on to the contents of the bait tins.

I walked down to Jack Lane. There were plenty of blue tits and great tits in the trees and bushes along the railway embankment but I had no luck with willow tits today. It was the same story in the nature reserve. I caught a glimpse of the moorhen in the reedbeds but I was damned if I could find where the water rail was calling from.

Jack Lane 

The horses had been moved between fields along the lane. A small flock of fieldfares were busy on the far side of the now-empty field by the nature reserve with a few blackbirds, song thrushes and redwings. There were a hundred and twenty-something pied wagtails in the field by the Irlam Locks water treatment works along with a couple of pairs of mistle thrushes and about a hundred starlings. There were roughly a hundred black-headed gulls on the water treatment works itself.

Bluebells, Wellacre Wood 

It was a busy afternoon for dog walkers in Wellacre Wood so there wasn't much about and I didn't linger. I got the 15 bus back into Stretford and walked home past the allotments where the first of the starlings were arriving to roost and practice singing at each other.