Chat Moss

Chat Moss, walking North from Twelve Yards Road 

It was a cooler, greyer sort of day today so I thought I'd have an afternoon stroll around Chat Moss to see if I could bump into any of the quail that have been singing on there this week. I also thought I'd check out Little Woolden Moss for quail and see if the Channel wagtail's back this year. There's also the little matter of the black grouse that's appeared from God knows where or how but keeps being seen flying about at teatime. So I thought I'd go for a walk.

The weather forecasts and radar promised a bout of light rain late afternoon and heavy rain this evening so I'd taken my raincoat. Just as well as the "light rain" was early and started the moment I stepped off the bus and onto Cutnook Lane. I wish I'd thought to put my cap in my pocket, trying to hear birds with my hood up is tricky unless I tuck it behind my ears (I didn't meet a soul until late on so this is precisely what I did).

There was a flock of woodpigeons with the horses on Raspberry Lane, magpies and carrion crows foraged on the turf field across the road and swallows hawked low over both. Further along Cutnook Lane chiffchaffs and blackbirds sang in the birch scrub, a blackcap sang in the hedgerow by the fishery and families of wrens bounced about in the bracken. A female kestrel sat on the farmhouse roof awhile before flying off across the field.

A dozen or more black-headed gulls fussed about the fishery and more flew to and fro between the pools on the moss. There was a steady traffic of lesser black-backs overhead heading towards the roosts on the Mersey. Woodpigeons flitted between fields and copses and a few pairs of stock doves flew by.

Just North of Twelve Yards Road 

North of Twelve Yards Road the chiffchaffs gave way to willow warblers, of which there were many. I wondered what the magpies were mobbing in the tree just ahead of me until a buzzard flew off at head height. Only once the buzzard had gone did the woodpigeons take fright at my being there.

In the willow scrub a couple of large red damselflies and an azure damselfly braved the rain, as did my first common darters of the year. A couple of whitethroats and a song thrush joined the willow warblers in song. Goldfinches bounced through the treetops, including some juveniles still young enough to be being fed by their parents. A pair of bullfinches had a couple of youngsters with them.

Twelve Yards Road 

The mallards and moorhens on the open pools could be found easily enough once I got the right side of a couple of birch trees but I could only hear the reed buntings and oystercatchers. I thought it was going to be the same with the heron but it flew up over the trees and headed off over the railway.

The light rain became a little heavier and I decided to knock any ideas of visiting Little Woolden Moss on the head. As I walked down the path back to Twelve Yards Road a family of stoats barrelled across the path. The kits stayed to play in the rain for a few minutes completely oblivious of me and my wet camera until their mother reminded them they were supposed to be crossing the path. The light was atrocious so the photos aren't much cop technically but they were great fun to watch.

Stoat kittens at play in the pouring rain

The light was abysmal so I was happy to get any sort of photos of them at all.

Mother arrived and made sure they got across the path and off to wherever it was they were going.

I trudged back down the road. The singing skylarks, yellowhammers and meadow pipits in the fields gave way to the blackcaps and song thrushes in the hedgerows down Cutnook Lane. I didn't have long to wait for the 100 back to the Trafford Centre and thence home. It had been the most comfortable walk I'd had in weeks.

Twelve Yards Road