Moss Side

Carrion crow, Alexandra Park

After the bad weather of the past couple of days it was nice to wake to a mild, fitfully sunny Autumn's day. Unfortunately I'd slept very badly, just a couple of hours after finally getting off some time about 0700, so I struggled with the thought of dragging myself out for a walk. Trees and trespassers knocked out the local trains for most of the morning so I thought I'd have a nice quiet day listening to the cricket. I changed my mind by the end of South Africa's innings. So off I trotted. I didn't fancy a weekend walk along the Mersey, I couldn't get to the Salford Mosses, In the end, via a circuitous route, I drifted into town and promptly drifted back out again when it was decided that because the train I was travelling on was running half an hour late it was going to skip the station I wanted, and also the stations for plans J and K…

Alexandra Park 

So I got the 103 into Moss Side and had a gentle stroll around Alexandra Park.

The carrion crows, squirrels and magpies were busy rummaging about on the open grass while woodpigeons and parakeets clattered about the treetops. Small birds of any kind were notably absent. 

Tufted duck, Alexandra Park

The results of the avian flu outbreak earlier in the year were painfully obvious by the small number of waterfowl on the lake. Half a dozen each of coots and moorhens, a dozen tufted ducks, a couple of dozen mallards, half a dozen Canada geese and just the one mute swan. About thirty black-headed gulls clamoured for scraps by the ice cream van.

Alexandra Park 

I walked down into Chorlton for the 150 to the Trafford Centre. Magpies, carrion crows and jackdaws flitted between the trees as I waited on Wilbraham Road and a jay bounced about from bollard to bollard until it tired of the game and flew over to the house across the road to spend five minutes trying to prise open a skylight window.