Chat Moss

Juvenile swallow

It being a warm, muggy afternoon the strategy was to go for a walk round Chat Moss looking for dragonflies, any birds I could see being a bonus. That way I wouldn't be disappointed by a dearth of birds, instead I'd be disappointed by a dearth of dragonflies. It turned out there were plenty of both about.

By this time of year I've usually seen loads of darters of one kind or another but July's weather was so awful I've only managed to bump into a couple of common darters so I was hoping to catch up. I managed a good start with a couple more patrolling the ditch by Cutnook Road just after I'd crossed the motorway. A Southern Hawker hawking over the tops of the bracken by the fishery was hard work as it kept zipping behind birch saplings while I was trying to identify it. The common darters sitting on the hawthorn hedge were more accommodating.

Along Cutnook Lane 

The fields either side of the lane were busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons and magpies and a buzzard lazily soared overhead and drifted towards Irlam. A male kestrel, the only one I saw today, was sat on a distant fencepost by the stables.

I had reconciled myself to having a barren time of it with small birds this afternoon. So it was a nice surprise to bump into a mixed tit flock at the junction with Twelve Yards Road. I heard a great tit first, then the contact calls of long-tailed tits. Then, all of a sudden, there were a couple of dozen long-tailed tits, at least half a dozen each of great tits and blue tits, some juvenile chiffchaffs, a willow warbler, a nuthatch and a couple of robins bouncing through the trees around me. It was a mug's game trying to sort out the runners and riders but I tried my best, though had to admit defeat with whatever they were bouncing through the thick birch canopy beyond the drain.

Peacock butterflies

North of Twelve Yards Road a couple more families of long-tailed tits bounced through the birch scrub while robins, wrens and nuthatches foraged in the mature trees on the other side of the path. I turned onto the path that runs parallel to Twelve Yards Road and bumped into a lot of peacock butterflies and my first black darters of the year. As I walked along there would be crowds of black darters and common darters zipping round the tops of the vegetation by the path. A couple of female ruddy darters provided a challenge for me, I didn't see any males about. A few Southern hawkers were flying round the trees just above head height.

Female ruddy darter

Black darter
I didn't notice the spider lurking on the underside of the seedhead until I downloaded the photo at home. In the event of a meeting I don't know which, if either, would be the victor.

There wasn't much about on most of the pools that could be seen through the trees. The last pool was the exception: a couple of oystercatchers were dozing on a little island, a heron and a little egret were hunting the margins and my first green sandpiper of the year was having a preen in the deep shade over on the far bank.

Along Twelve Yards Road 

I carried on walking towards Four Lanes End. I've not been bitten by horseflies for a couple of weeks so it was their turn today (I was savaged by mosquitos last week). Over a hundred woodpigeons were clattering about in the barley stubble along Twelve Yards Road.

Swallows

I'd been very conscious of a complete absence of hirundines all afternoon and was getting a bit concerned about it as I walked down Astley Road. I needn't have worried: there were over a hundred swallows swooping around the Trophy Lawn Turf yard in the company of fifty or more house martins. There must have been over fifty pied wagtails kicking about, too, most of them juveniles. A familiar call caught my ear and I turned to see a male yellow wagtail sitting on top of one of the barns. It skittered off onto the turf field, I couldn't find where it went but found a female near one of the banks, she disappeared into the crowd when a bunch of starling swooped down from the telegraph wires and headed for the pile of topsoil on the other side of the road.

Juvenile swallow

Crossing back over the motorway I decided to walk down Roscoe Road into Irlam for a change. It's a lot less busy than Astley Road and I got a better view of the ploughed field by the motorway with its hundreds of woodpigeons and pigeons with a dozen stock doves and a few collared doves and mistle thrushes.

Along Roscoe Road 

I didn't have to wait long for the 100 back to the Trafford Centre where there were no black-headed gulls to be seen on the waste lot but dozens of lesser black-backs wheeling overhead.