Urban birding: Salford

Broughton Park 

Another day full of grim weather. The school playing field was busy with gulls waiting for the lunchtime banquet. There were seventy-six black-headed gulls together with ten herring gulls, three common gulls and, for a change, four adult lesser black-backs.

I've hit that middle of January feeling where I start fretting that I've not been to All The Places and seen All The Birds. It's a nonsense, of course, but given the weather and the available daylight there's limited scope for doing anything spectacular. I've dispelled this mood in the past by doing a bit of proper urban birding on dreary days, making random visits to places that can be covered in less than an hour and are within five minutes' walk of a bus stop or train station. I can use my monthly County Card so it doesn't cost me anything extra and it's not like there's any shortage of parks, tiny bits of woodland and the like in Greater Manchester. A quick wander to see what's about and job's a good 'un. It keeps things ticking over so I don't feel in the doldrums. So I gave it a go today.

I got the bus to the Trafford Centre in the rain and got the next bus out, which happened to be the 52 that goes through Salford to Cheetham Hill. The rain calmed down as we went through Eccles and the weather settled into being very grey with occasional heavy showers. I decided I'd be pushing my luck a lot getting off at Castle Irwell for a wander round the Kersal Wetlands so hung on a few stops and had a stroll through Broughton Park.

Broughton Park 

Depending on which gate you go through its Broughton Park or Clowes Park but it's all the same park in the end. It's about the same size as Lostock Park, my local, but has the advantage that half the acreage is a pond fringed on one side by mature trees, on the other by mown grass. So it has waterfowl. It's always worth checking the waterfowl on a park pond. There's nearly always Canada geese, mallards, moorhens and coots, plus some things else. Today's some things else were three goosanders — two drakes and a redhead — and a heron. A couple of jays were busy retrieving acorns from their caches, robins sang, magpies and blackbirds foraged, a flock of long-tailed tits bounced around in the trees.

Broughton Park 

I did a circuit of the lake then it started raining heavily again so I wandered over to Bury New Road to get the 98 into town. Besides the waterfowl I'd seen most of the species you'd usually expect in a suburban park or garden. Not spectacular, but it's worth bearing in mind that I saw as many species today with a half an hour round the park as I saw in an hour and a bit's wandering round Ivy Green and Chorlton Ees yesterday. Small parks are always worth a quick nosy in Winter.