Mersey Valley

Canada geese and shag, Sale Water Park

It's that time of year when lights are vivid, contrasts are strong and shadows are long. I'd listened to India's innings in the one day match and decided to go for a walk and catch up with the England innings when I got home, which turned out to be an excellent decision and I didn't bother doing the catch-up. Instead I joined what seemed like half of Chorlton having a walk round on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Ivy Green 

I got the 25 to the top of Edge Lane and walked down into Ivy Green. Great tits and blue tits bounced about the undergrowth while goldfinches, woodpigeons and magpies moved about the treetops and a great spotted woodpecker bashed away at a bit of dead willow stump. Squirrels and jays were stashing acorns, I sometimes wonder if they don't keep half an eye on where the other's caching their food.

Jay, Chorlton Ees

There were more jays in Chorlton Ees and they were considerably noisier, out-shrieking even the ring-necked parakeets that were zipping round the treetops. With all that going on it would have been easy to miss the dunnocks in the dead hedges and the heron lurking by the pond in the hay meadow.

Heron, Chorlton Ees

There was enough parakeet action going on at Jackson's Boat to more than make up for recent absences. A couple of buzzards floated low overhead and drifted over to the golf courses.

Sale Ees 

I was going to say that Sale Ees was quiet but the carrion crows, magpies and parakeets made it anything but.

Mute swans, Sale Water Park

Sale Water Park was busy with kayakers, waterboarders and jet skis so the birds were pushed into corners of the lake. Most of the mute swans congregated by Cow Lane, a couple were with the Canada geese, mallards, coots and black-headed gulls catching free meals by the car park jetty. The great crested grebes lurked near the reedbeds, disappearing into them on the approach of a jet ski. The adult with a dodgy wings looks to be going strong still.

Shag and Canada geese, Sale Water Park

The juvenile shag that had turned up yesterday was still about, sitting on the pontoon entirely unmoved by the busy humans to-ing and fro-ing on the water nearby.

Broad Ees Dole 

The tit flocks on Ivy Green and Chorlton Ees had been very loosely organised, more in the way of passing coincidences rather than coordinated assembly. It was quite different on Sale Ees, the blue tits and great tits definitely tagging along with the long-tailed tits. One of the flocks on Broad Ees Dole included some very conspicuous goldcrests acting as vanguard with some of the long-tailed tits.

The pool by the hide on Broad Ees Dole was relatively quiet: three herons loafed on the islands, handfuls of shovelers and gadwall loafed on the water while a few coots and moorhens fussed about. The half a dozen gadwalls on the teal pool were accompanied by a couple of pairs of mallards and a heron.

Teal pool, Broad Ees Dole 

I crossed the bridge into Stretford Ees and walked down to the aquaduct, the trees rattling with the sound of parakeets and magpies coming in to roost. It was the merest chance I noticed the treecreeper sidling up a tree trunk by the path. Out on the open meadow a kestrel hovered quite low over the tall grass, not a lot more than head high. Whatever it had spotted seemed to be keeping its head well down.

The clouds rolled in as I walked along Kickety Brook towards Stretford Meadows. Jackdaws and woodpigeons were starting to go to roost as the parakeets settled to their treetops mutterings.

Stretford Meadows 

It was positively gloomy when I got to Stretford Meadows so I had a stroll through the woodland margin and into Stretford town centre. Dozens of woodpigeons were settling into the trees by this stage.

I waited for the bus home as squadrons of lesser black-backs flew South to roost on the water parks or over on Woolston Eyes and small groups of black-headed gulls flew North to their roosts in Trafford Park.