Hollingworth Lake

Carrion crow

Day five of the heatwave and I was getting fidgety, even contemplating braving the perils of Transpennine Express to look for the brown booby in the North Sea fog.

Instead I headed up to Hollingworth Lake for a wander. There's plenty enough tree cover providing shade for most of the circuit and I could take a detour along the path to Shaw Moss to see if any passage migrants were lurking in the hawthorns.

My local train doesn't stop at Deansgate any more so the cross-city connection is a walk from Oxford Road to St Peter's Square for the tram to Victoria. I had a stroke of luck: as I was crossing Chepstow Street the free city centre bus was arriving, I got that to the People's History Museum, walked down to Salford Central and had five minutes to wait for the train to Smithybridge. (The recent building work at Salford Central appear to have been designed to make it even more inaccessible than it used to be.)

Hollingworth Lake 

Arriving at Hollingworth Lake I immediately took the path by The Beach pub and wandered round. Light cloud and a gentle breeze took the edge off the sun. Out on the water a raft of gulls — mostly equal numbers of herring gulls and lesser black-backs with a handful of black-headed gulls — was torn between being outraged by the intrusion of a lot of kids learning how to canoe and wondering if they had any food on them. 

Robins, blue tits and chiffchaffs rummaged through the hedgerow, the chiffchaffs coming within an arm's length of me as I was looking to see what was about and always making sure to dip back into the hedge for a moment whenever the camera got them in focus, only to pop back out again once the shot was missed. I admitted defeat.

Hollingworth Lake

A couple of brown hawkers patrolled the waterside while common darters flitted about the tops of the hedge. Red admirals fluttered about by the paths while speckled woods dodged about in the undergrowth beneath the trees.

From Hollingworth Lake looking towards Shaw Moss 

The fields by the side of the lake were busy with woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows. A handful of swallows twittered overhead but it looked like I'd already missed the main passage.

All the mallards on the lake were asleep on the jetty by the water activities centre near the café.

Rabbits

I took half an hour's diversion along the path to Shaw Moss, checking out the hawthorns in the fields and the thicket of hawthorns, spindle trees and rowans by the farm. I knew there were a lot of small birds in the thicket because I watched fifty-odd starlings settle in there as I was walking up. I could actually find perhaps a dozen of them when I got there. The greenfinches and goldfinches were more conspicuous. The hawthorns in the fields were busy with a mixed tit flock — blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits and all of them very fidgety.

The lane to Shaw Moss 

A trick of the topography suppresses the sounds of the motorway and the visitors around Hollingworth Lake despite my being only a couple of hundred yards down the path. It was a treat to be able to relax and not have to filter out noise. Most of the quiet contact calls in the bushes were titmice or robins. A very weak call somewhere in the depths of a hawthorn over by the opposite fence had me beaten. I had hopes of a spotted flycatcher but I couldn't see anything except a couple of woodpigeons gorging on haws and I wasn't convinced enough of the identification to claim it.

Aside from the birds I was tripping over red admirals and speckled woods and the rabbits weren't being particularly shy.

Returning to the lake I reckoned that I deserved an ice cream and went and sat down in the shade to eat it in the company of a treeful of greenfinches and goldfinches, including some newly-minted youngsters of both.

Lesser black-backs
I eventually concluded that the bird on the buoy is a first-Summer lesser black-back

Resuming the walk I checked out the raft of large gulls on this side of the lake which was mostly lesser black-backs and included first- and second-Summer birds in a variety of garbs, reminding me that I'll soon be making a fool of myself when the gullwatching season properly kicks off. Every year I get less and less confident with gull identification.

Cormorant

The water was high at the hide and there wasn't enough exposed land for any waders. A few teal dozed and bathed in one corner of the pool keeping well away from a heron lurking in the other. Cormorants and black-headed gulls perched on the posts that usually mark the end of the mud bank.

By Rakewood Road
(With self-portrait.)

I carried on walking, the chiffchaffs in the wooded stretches along the lake being replaced by the willow warblers in the trees in the open fields by Rakewood Road. A buzzard soared low over Hollingworth Hill and drifted towards Blackstone Edge. Swallows passed overhead, mostly in twos and threes with a couple of flocks of half a dozen birds.

Cormorant in the afternoon haze

A haze settled over the lake so the distant rafts of gulls were unidentifiable white shapes until individual birds took wing. Depending on which reference I chose to believe I either had five minutes or twelve minutes to wait for a 456 to Rochdale. In the event it was twenty and I felt every minute of it standing unsheltered at the bus stop. I'd have been better off walking down to Littleborough for the train.

It was a long and hot journey home but I'd had a good afternoon's birdwatching.

Rabbits