Mersey Valley

Song thrush, Stretford Meadows

It was a bright, late Spring day and I was destined not to take much advantage of it while I waited for a delivery I had to sign for.

I was still awake for the dawn chorus, which is getting to be a habit. Today's was a bit more varied, usually only the blackbirds kick in before five. They started as usual, then the wren and by five o'clock the robin and a couple of woodpigeons had joined in. A carrion crow and some lesser black-backs had passed overhead by the time I finally got to sleep. Warblers aren't featuring in dawn choruses this year, a complete contrast to last. A couple of chiffchaffs have passed through and a blackcap had taken up residence but seems to have moved on after a drastic bit of gardening at the railway station at the beginning of the month removed the big shrubs.

The spadgers are still inconspicuously active in the garden, often only detected when the odd tweet accompanies movements in the boysenberries. A robin and the male great tit have started showing themselves, too busy collecting insects to be bothered by me.

Brimstone, Cob Kiln Wood

It was nigh on teatime when the delivery arrived and I could get out for a walk so I set off for Cob Kiln Wood. All the paths, even the ones that usually require a tightrope walk along felled branches, were bone dry and mud-cracked.

Cob Kiln Wood
The bridge over Old Eeas Brook

There were plenty of birds about, many in song, but there is already so much leaf cover as to make it difficult to see much. Even a family of a dozen long-tailed tits an arm's length away in an alder tree were impossible to photograph. The leaf cover seems thicker than usual this year, perhaps the result of a mild Winter and not much in the way of snow and strong winds to trim the edges. Or perhaps I'm just getting my excuses in early for a lean period during the  post-breeding moult.

Cob Kiln Wood 

Chiffchaffs, wrens, robins and chaffinches sang along with the inevitable blackbirds. Blue tits, great tits and goldfinches flitted about in the treetops while magpies and woodpigeons clattered about in the fields. A couple of duelling blackcaps had me guessing for a while as their songs were quite different, one having the scratchy quality I associate with garden warblers. I eventually saw them both and confirmed their indentities. Orange tips chased each other over the brambles and half a dozen brimstones fussed over the patches of red campion in the clearings.

River Mersey 

I walked along the Mersey back into Stretford. More chiffchaffs and blackcaps sang in the hedgerows with robins, wrens and blackbirds. There was only the one duck on the river, a drake mallard, which struck me as odd until I noticed how many wet dogs were being walked. There were plenty of carrion crows on the banks and squadrons of jackdaws and rooks commuted between the golf course and the nests in the trees on Bradley Lane.

Robin, Kickety Brook local nature reserve
I pushed my luck with this photo in the depths of the undergrowth: 600mm lens, one-thirteenth of a second exposure, I was worrying there'd be no bird pictures in this post.

Rather than carrying on down to Chester Road I bobbed into Kickety Brook local nature reserve and walked through to the bridge over the motorway. It was another game of hide and seek. I was trying to find the garden warbler singing in an ash tree when I found a nuthatch at its nest. I eventually saw enough of the garden warbler to confirm it couldn't have been a blackcap with a peculiar song that was classic garden warbler. I didn't even try looking through layers of undergrowth to find the pheasant.

Early purple orchid, Stretford Meadows

It was getting late and the song thrushes had stationed themselves around the periphery of Stretford Meadows to drown out the motorway noise. Chiffchaffs and wrens joined in. Out in the open meadow the magpies and woodpigeons were settling down for the night to the sound of dunnocks, reed buntings and whitethroats. Ring-necked parakeets wheeled and screeched over the trees before settling down somewhere on Urmston Lane. The first early purple orchids were opening, heralding those few weeks where there'll be an abundance and confusion of spotted orchids, marsh orchids and their many hybrids dotted around the meadow.

Stretford Meadows