Pennington Flash

Reed buntings

The weather was slightly better today so I set off for a toddle round Pennington Flash. It was very grey and decidedly cooler than it has been when I got off the bus and the wind threatened to make it feel even cooler. As I walked down the path from St Helens Road it started drizzling. None of which stopped the robins, great tits and coal tits singing. The footpaths have been in a worse condition, and recently during the construction of the new café, but not by much. I checked any likely pools and ditches for frog spawn but didn't find any.

The brook by Pennington Flash 

The usual suspects were on the car park mugging passersby for bread and bird seed. They were joined today by a couple of Muscovy ducks from God knows where. I've only just realised that I didn't see the car park oystercatcher today. Last time I came he was on the Horrocks spit with a couple more oystercatchers; he might have been there today, there was no chance of checking out the spit because workmen were fixing the ramp to the hide. I noticed that all the first-Winter mute swans had been sent packing by their elders. Pairs of mute swans were dotted round the pools of the reserve, three pairs hung around the car park and just about tolerated each other most of the time.

Lesser black-back

Half a dozen goldeneye were out in the middle of the flash, as were a pair of great crested grebes that were busy with their courtship dance. It was late lunchtime so the raft of large gulls was only fifty or so birds, half a dozen of which were great black-backs, the rest evenly split between lesser black-backs and herring gulls. A few sand martins had flown in earlier in the day but they'd been and gone by the time I arrived.

Walking down to the Tom Edmondson Hide 

It was quiet again at the Tom Edmondson Hide with just a few coots, mallards and tufted ducks. Herons and Canada geese flew in but didn't settle.

I walked down to Ramsdales, the trees by the path being busy with great tits, blue tits and goldfinches. The water was high at Ramsdales, a few Canada geese loafed on what was left of the islands, a couple of dozen teal dabbled and dozed. A pair of great crested grebes looking like they were prospecting likely nest sites but didn't stop.

Goldcrest

Goldcrest

On the way back from Ramsdales I bumped into a pair of goldcrests which were too busy to be much fussed by passersby and even came within an arm's length a few times. I had to fiddle a lot with the settings on the camera to try and get any photos that overcame the very gloomy light and very active goldcrests.

Pengy's Hide was full of people so I gave it a miss and spent a couple of minutes watching an enterprising pair of mistle thrushes feeding around the excavator working behind the café.

Reed bunting

The Bunting Hide was very busy and lived up to its name with a flock of a couple of dozen reed buntings. Oddly, the male buntings easily outnumbered the females three to one. The fat feeders were covered in a carpet of great tits and long-tailed tits, the blue tits hardly getting a look in. Robins, chaffinches and dunnocks stole seed from a pair of rats feeding on the ground in front of the hide while more robins and a pair of bullfinches took advantage whenever the squirrels got distracted from the seed on the dead branch feeders. A willow tit made a nice cameo appearance, I'm guessing by its almost entirely rich caramel brown underparts that it was a male. Half a dozen stock doves flew in and joined the mallards and moorhens feeding on the ground. I wished very hard for a brambling to come along, which was downright ungrateful in the midst of a big flock of reed buntings and it serves me right that one didn't turn up.

Great tit

Bullfinch

Robin in the rain

The rain became heavy, just to add to the sum total of joy to the nations. I wandered down to what was the Teal Hide and I now need to remember is the Charlie Owen Hide. It was rededicated in his memory over the weekend. I think he was the elderly chap who used to let on when I bumped into him in the Tom Edmondson Hide on late afternoons, I'd been thinking I hadn't seen him for a long while.

The water was high here, too, and the islands were almost completely submerged. A pair of snipe waded ankle-deep on one of them. There were only a couple of pairs of gadwall about but there were a couple of dozen shovelers. Most of them were drakes, the pairs tended to keep away from the crowd though one drake was unlucky and had to keep chasing off eight drakes that were tagging along after his duck. Half a dozen long-tailed small birds skittering about in the reeds turned out to be long-tailed tits, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get my hopes up for a minute. They did a very good job of finding me the dabchick I'd been hearing but not seeing.

Shovelers
For some reason I find shovelers the hardest common species of duck to get a decent photograph of.

Snipe
I had the advantage that they were moving.

I walked back to St Helens Road via Leigh Sports Village, almost tripping over blackbirds and song thrushes all the way down the path. It had been a bloody horrible day's weather but the birdwatching had been excellent.

Pennington Flash