Appley Bridge

It was another bright, crisp day and if I'm being honest the idea of staying inside and enjoying it as a spectator sport had its appeal. The spadgers were making inroads on the freshly filled feeders and a dozen starlings came in to attack the fat balls. Both the families of spadgers were in, though Team Silver looked sorely depleted, never more than five at a time flying in from that direction. The woodpigeons are drifting back to gardens and rooftops (I wonder how many, if any, are the local breeding population) but aren't settling in the fields for any great length of time. The school playing field is starting to approach double figures of black-headed gulls amongst the playtime melee.

I appear to be in a filling in the gaps mood lately. I got the lunchtime train into town with a view to make my way over to Chisworth to see if the flock of waxwings was still about. (It's a straightforward journey on paper but making the connections with the bus between Glossop and Marple is an art.) Arriving at Oxford Road the Southport train was sitting there ready to leave ten minutes late. I took this as an omen and got on. I wouldn't have had much time for birdwatching at Southport or Martin Mere so I got off at Appley Bridge to explore the quarry lake just down the road from the station.

Most of the time when I indulge in these speculative forays I get a decent walk out of it and often find a gem that I've been missing. It's not very often I find a dud, today was one of them. You can only approach it from a distance on the main road and it's just a small drowned quarry with no surrounding vegetation. The birdwatching cupboard wasn't entirely bare: a flock of more than a hundred black-headed gulls loafed on the water in the company of a dozen common gulls, half a dozen lesser black-backs, a few herring gulls and a pair of coots. It's the sort of site you keep an eye on if it's local but you wouldn't make a special trip without good reason.

On the way back to the station the hawthorn hedgerows were thick with hungry blackbirds that didn't pay any heed to passersby and song thrushes which dropped down to the floor behind the hedge if anyone got within arm's length.

There's a train every half hour so it was no hardship getting back though I'd have been better advised waiting half an hour for the train home rather than getting the bus, the rush hour traffic jam down Chester Road seems to kick in before the school run these days.