Mersey Valley

Heron, Chorlton Ees

Another dreich day. A bad night's sleep and an update on the weather persuaded me to postpone the planned adventure in favour of a lie-in. It was a fairly quiet morning in the back garden, even the spadgers were coming in in ones and twos. Over on the school playing field seventy-five black-headed gulls loafed in the company of a couple each of herring gulls and common gulls as they waited for the banquet at lunch break.

Not walking down to Turn Moss 

At lunchtime I got the 25 bus and got off at Ryebank Road. The plan was to start at Turn Moss and wander down to Chorlton Ees then on to Chorlton Water Park. That plan was immediately amended once I saw the state of Hawthorn Lane. I wasn't getting onto Turn Moss that way so I wandered round and got into Ivy Green from Kingsmill Road.

Ivy Green 

I took a meandering path through Ivy Green. A couple of mixed tit flocks, both made of a couple of dozen long-tailed tits with a dozen or more blue tits and great tits, bounced around in the trees. There were plenty of robins, blackbirds and woodpigeons while jackdaws and ring-necked parakeets seemed to be having a competition for the noisiest birds in the treetops. It took me an age to find the willow tit churring in a holly bush, not helped by its sharing the bush with a couple of very mobile and vocal great tits.

Chorlton Brook 

I walked down Chorlton Brook which was very high and pretty much deserted save a couple of magpies and grey squirrels so I crossed over the first bridge into Chorlton Ees. Oddly enough I didn't see a single tit flock of any kind here, a first for me. Robins sang, magpies made a racket and parakeets made an even bigger racket. It started to rain, which literally put a damper on everything. I scoured the damp edges of the hay field for any signs of woodcock and was so intent on this forlorn quest it was a long time before I noticed there was a young heron standing right in front of me.

The Mersey at Jackson's Boat was gob-smackingly high and flowing very fast indeed. 

River Mersey
The blue structure on the right is the sluice gate that empties into the Sale Water Park basin when the river floods.

Looking upstream to the tram bridge from Jackson's Boat 

A few mallards managed to tread water in the lee of some driftwood and a couple of carrion crows foraged on what little of the bank that wasn't underwater. 

By this stage it was pouring down and nobody was having fun. The options were to walk up to Chorlton through Barlow Moor Road and wait twenty five minutes for the 25 back home or walk down Rifle Road past Sale Water Park and under the motorway and wait five minutes for the 18 to the Trafford Centre (it's roughly the same distance either way from Jackson's Boat). The sun threatened to come out as the 18 got to Urmston and I was tempted to get off for a quick wander on Urmston Meadows but common sense and a deep distrust of this weather prevailed in the end. I suspect I'll be doing a few more half walks like this before the month's out.