Wellacre Country Park

Blackbird, Wellacre Wood

It was a cooler day today but overcast and muggy, not ideal walking weather, so I decided to have a potter about Wellacre Country Park. 

Wellacre Wood 

I got the 256 into Flixton and walked into Wellacre Wood, the hedgerows being busy with robins, blackbirds and great tits and a couple of parakeets out-shouting the kids in the school playground. In the depths of the wood, away from schoolyard noises, the hawthorn bushes were heaving with blackbirds, at least thirty of them, and about a dozen redwings. 

Treecreeper, Wellacre Wood

The thrushes largely crowded out the mixed tit flocks. Oddly, these didn't seem to have any long-tailed tits in the mix but did include at least a couple of treecreepers.

Great tit, Wellacre Wood

Looking over towards Irlam Locks a couple of hundred starlings billowed about the electricity pylons. Fifty-odd pigeons were flying about the locks and eventually settled on the lock gates.

Woodpigeons, Jack Lane

A couple of dozen woodpigeons rummaged and clattered in the treetops at Jack Lane. The identity of the bird calling in the reedbed was eventually established when the reed bunting took a breath and started calling out of synch with a wren. A calling water rail was an easier one to identify.

Jack Lane 

There had been reports of big flocks of redwings passing through the area this morning. I missed the big flocks but there were still a few in the trees with some blackbirds. A mistle thrush was my first for this site.

Willows, Jack Lane 

There were more woodpigeons with the great tits, wrens and robins along the railway embankment. Dutton's Pond was quiet, just a few moorhens and a migrant hawker.

I passed under the railway onto Green Hill. A large mixed tit flock, including long-tailed tits this time, bounced around in the trees by the railway and a great spotted woodpecker flew by.

I walked up the hill, much to the annoyance of half a dozen jays that objected to my getting too close to their oak saplings. This triggered the flight of more than fifty woodpigeons that had been lurking in the hawthorn bushes. Thirty-odd redwings flew overhead, calling all the while.

River Mersey, Flixton Bridge 

A scan of the river at Flixton Bridge found me a few mallards and a dabchick.

I got the 247 to Altrincham to do a bit of shopping. Along the way I noticed a flock of fifty-something lapwings roosting on the roof of the Carpetright store in the Atlantic Retail Park.

Michaelmas daisies, Wellacre Country Park