Wellacre Country Park

Heron, Irlam Locks

I decided to watch the football before going out today. The garden was heaving with at least half a dozen noisy spadgers so it was inevitable that this should attract the attention of the female sparrowhawk. The commotion as the spadgers, collared doves and blackbirds panicked coincided with England's second goal which confused me rather. I'm not sure the pass was successful, leastways she was quickly on her way, powering through the sycamores and beyond the railway track.

I wasn't sure where to go for a walk so fell back on the old standby of going to the bus stop and getting the next one to come along, which is why I got the 25 to the Trafford Centre. The next bus there was the 100 to Warrington via Irlam which I'd usually take for a walk into Chat Moss by Cutnook Lane but I wasn't in the mood for a troll across the mosses. 

The relict stretch of the Irwell by Princes Park 

The rules of the game needed to be followed so I got it and got off at Princes Park in Irlam and walked down to the locks. I'm always walking over the locks into Irlam at the end of a wander round Wellacre Country Park and it feels like it's more than the half mile it really is (probably because it takes so damned long to cross the main road). The path I followed through Princes Park isn't just rather nicer than walking along the roads it halves the distance. I've been walking past a hidden entrance to the park all these years.

Cormorant, Irlam Locks

About fifty black-headed gulls were loafing on the dock with a similar number of pigeons and handfuls of mallards, cormorants and lesser black-backs. A heron lurked on a dead tree upstream and two more flew in and landed downstream.

Along Jack Lane 

There wasn't anything on the water treatment works except a lot of magpies. I was just starting to feel despondent at how quiet it all was when a flock of swallows descended on the stables, hawking low over the training yard and the canal.

Woodpigeon, Jack Lane

I walked down Jack Lane to the nature reserve. Woodpigeons flew to and fro, always in single figures, and a few magpies called in the trees. Other than that it was very quiet indeed.

Pond skater, Jack Lane

At last a couple of wrens muttered in the undergrowth to break the eerie silence and a chiffchaff called from the trees on the railway embankment. A lone brown hawker patrolled the reedbeds. Just as I thought that was my lot a juvenile bullfinch started calling from the treetops. It was so young it still hadn't got its cap. For all its squeaking there wasn't any response from its parents wherever they were.

Juvenile bullfinch, Jack Lane

Jack Lane

Dutton's Pond was even quieter with just two moorhens keeping the anglers company. 

Dutton's Pond 

I walked through Wellacre Wood, passing a long-tailed tit family in the hedgerow and a couple of ring-necked parakeets coming in to roost by the school. After such a quiet wander round it was a surprise to hear a curlew passing overhead towards Chat Moss. I didn't have long to wait for the 256 home.