Salford Quays

Pied wagtail

The overnight heavy rains and winds carried on throughout the morning and on and off throughout the afternoon. I thought I should get some fresh air so I headed over to Pennington Flash to see what the wind had blown in. Well, I headed that way but didn't get there because the 126 and 132 buses from the Trafford Centre were suspended due to a motorway accident. Which was a bit disappointing as I'd had a longer walk than usual to get the bus to the Trafford Centre because my local bus stop's closed again (the same bunch of Yahoos who dug up the road by the bus stop in Spring are digging the same bit of road up again, rather in the spirit of Horace de Vere Cole). Normally if there's a problem on the motorway the drivers on these services go into Barton and drive up Worsley Road to get into Boothstown, adding five minutes to the journey at this time of day so my guess is the buses were trapped in the crowds on the motorway. Bad news all round, I hope nobody was hurt at all.

I checked the Transport for Greater Manchester live departures web page to see what the alternatives were. The alternatives were all, apparently, not running. Which was odd because there they were at the bus station picking up passengers and going places. The "Bee Network" revamp of this site seems to have issues connecting to the bus data which is a tad inconvenient as Google Maps hasn't caught up with the new bus schedules introduced at the beginning of the month.

MediaCityUK from Wharfside 

Anyway, I got the X50 to Imperial War Museum North and had a walk along the wharfside in the pouring rain to see if anything had been blown in by the winds.

It was a bit early in the afternoon for the full gull roosts on the Ship Canal. There might have been fifty or so black-headed gulls dotted about in small groups of less than five. A couple of dozen large gulls, most of them immature herring gulls with a few adults and a few lesser black-backs, formed a couple of extremely loosely arranged rafts in midwater. Some of the young herring gulls had really blob-shaped beaks but nothing like the butter knife shape of a yellow-legged gull. Except one that was carrying a stick for no apparent reason.

Cormorant

My eye kept getting caught by bits of flotsam floating downriver, mostly bits of trees and street furniture. Every so often a passing stick would turn out to be a cormorant. A dozen mallards dozing way out amongst the bits were surprisingly easy to miss, unlike the two pairs of mute swans cruising the edges. Pied wagtails and goldfinches skittered about the embankment while swallows hawked low overhead.

Cormorant

The rain dampened the temptation to explore much of the Pomona Dock. A few Canada geese lurked by a pair of mute swans while more black-headed gulls and cormorants loafed on the water. More swallows whizzed about the embankment at head height.

I walked back and headed over the bridge to the Lowry complex. I noticed that the Canada geese I hadn't been seeing from Wharfside were all loafing on the quayside on Central Bay. I thought I'd get a bus over here but I don't know the services well enough to get cocky about them and all the sources of information were telling me different things about when any of them was due. In the end I gave it quarter of an hour then jacked it in and walked back over for the X50 back to the Trafford Centre. As I was crossing the bridge a pair of carrion crows chased a female sparrowhawk whence I came.

Imperial War Museum North 

I didn't have a long wait in train for the X50 bus that wasn't running and even less time for the 25 back home that wasn't running either. As we waited at the traffic lights by the motorway I noticed the rabbits were out early on the grass verge and the usual young peregrine was back sitting on the sign on the "Beyond" building after a couple of weeks' absence.