Cudworth

Skylark

I thought it high time I had an excursion into Yorkshire so I decided to investigate Edderthorpe Flash just outside Cudworth. At least two black-winged stilts have been on the flash the past few weeks and it looked a straightforward walk on Google Maps.

I got the train to Barnsley (you have to do the accent) then the 32 bus to the terminus at Cudworth. Google Maps reckoned it was just a mile and a bit's walk down Storrs Mill Lane then down Deepcar Lane to the flash. And so it would have been had it not been for the dirty big padlocked gate across Deepcar Lane. Google Maps proved useless in providing an alternative route so I had a look on BirdTrack and used the MapBox maps on there. MapBox can be a lot eccentric when it comes to railway stations (someone's put a lot of the pre-Beeching stations on there which is fascinating but useless) but pretty good on footpaths. So it was I walked back up the road and took the bridleway behind The Pinfold. This took a meandering route through the fields and onto the rise than runs parallel to Storrs Mill Lane and thence another meandering route down to Edderthorpe Flash. I might not visit this site again but just in case I think I'll have to do a sketch map so I don't repeat all the diversions that added a couple of miles to what should have been a five mile walk.

Tippit Lane 

It's actually a very nice walk and I was surprised to see not a single other soul all afternoon. The bridleway, Tippit Lane, cuts between fields of cereals and along most of its length it's bounded by high hedgerows. Swifts hawked over the fields and there was a steady traffic in woodpigeons and stock doves overhead. A couple of carrion crows escorted a buzzard out of their territory. Blackcaps and blackbirds sang in the hedgerows and goldfinches and greenfinches bounced about the treetops while great tits and robins kept a low profile. A family of wrens flitted across the path one by one, each of them stopping to tut at me as it passed.

Walking from Tippit Lane to Edderthorpe Flash 

Tippit Lane led to an open area with other paths radiating from it. I headed roughly South and hoped for the best, passing a couple of ponds with a family of moorhens and a singing reed warbler. Whitethroats and reed buntings sang in the scrub and I kept tripping over skylarks, in a couple of cases almost literally as they shot up from the grass by the path as I walked by. It was a muggy day and difficult to see where the sun was behind thick clouds so my roughly southwards trajectory owed as much to guesswork as map reading whenever there was a fork in the path. Chiffchaffs, wrens and willow warblers sang in the scrub and swifts hawked overhead.

I had noticed there weren't many butterflies about and was just drafting a comment about it in my head when I entered a riding that was heaving with the beasts. Most of them were gatekeepers, meadow browns, large whites and ringlets with a few large skippers and red admirals. The further I walked the more red admirals and gatekeepers there were.

Edderthorpe Flash 

At last I could see the flash, a couple of mute swans and some Canada geese identifiable even at this distance. The path dropped down into some woodland busy with great tits, blue tits, chiffchaffs and dunnocks. Blackbirds, song thrushes and blackcaps sang from the trees and reed buntings sang in the clearings. Black-headed gulls flew overhead in twos and threes.

It felt like a long walk to the flash though it can't have been more than a few hundred yards, perhaps an illusion occasioned by a random stretch of path about a hundred yards long that was dead straight and deeply gravelled.

Edderthorpe Flash 

The path curved and skirted the flash, separated by a fence and a few trees. 

Avocets

The rafts of Canada geese and nearly full grown mallard ducklings were the most immediately obvious birds on the water then I started noticing the avocets. Dozens of them including a few nearly full-sized youngsters feeding on the water and a few tiny chicks running about on the far bank. A couple of dozen juvenile black-headed gulls were loafing with the adults on the banks and nesting rafts over there. A couple of pairs of greylags swam across the flash with half a dozen goslings in tow and I noticed a couple of pairs each of mallards and gadwall had small ducklings with them.

There was a small pond on the other side of the path, a sedge warbler singing in the reeds and a family of tufted ducks dozing on the water.

I carried on down the path and reached another locked gate. Actually, it was locked, double-padlocked (one brass, one titanium) and decorated with barbed wire like an antisocial Christmas tree. Some basic Anglo-Saxon was employed before I set to scanning the flash from the gate. More mallards and avocets, some teal, a lot of lapwings, an oystercatcher, a pair of goosanders, more avocets. No stilts.

Black-winged stilt, avocets and black-headed gull

I'd been there a while and was exhausting my vocabulary when I noticed something with black wings poking out from a clump of sedge on the bank. My patience was rewarded as two stilts walked out and started feeding by the far bank giving very good, if rather distant, views. They are lovely birds and it's always nice to see them.

Black-winged stilt

Not finding a way to Park View Road 

I didn't fancy walking all the way back to Cudworth and I knew I was only a few hundred yards away from Park View Road where I could get the number 6 bus back to Barnsley but I couldn't find any paths that would get me there. I walked up a hill into a meadow full of meadow browns and ringlets and a carrion crow chased a sparrowhawk out of a tree.

Walking back to Cudworth 

I bowed to the inevitable and rejoined the path back to Cudworth. Which was no great hardship in the end as a very welcome breeze struck up and it was a very pleasant walk. A few linnets and a yellowhammer sang with the whitethroats and reed buntings in the open scrub. Another sparrowhawk shot by, chased by a magpie, carrying a small bird which could have been a young reed bunting, skylark or meadow pipit.

Six-spot burnet moth

Six-spot burnet moth

The reed warbler was quiet as I passed the ponds but the moorhens were still there. A couple of common blue damselflies skittered about the grass and a Southern hawker patrolled the reeds.

Chiffchaffs, robins and wrens busied themselves in the hedgerows along Tippit Lane and there were a lot of ringlets in the bracken along the open stretches.

Tippit Lane 

I got back to Cudworth and only had to wait five minutes for the next 32 to Barnsley. The train journey to Sheffield went smoothly and I only had eight minutes to wait for the Manchester train which was cancelled. The next train was half an hour later and although it was six carriages long only three were available for use so you can imagine how much fun that was. Never mind, it had been a day when I found the target bird and the walk I had neither intended nor wanted turned out to be very nice indeed.