Local patch

Lostock Park 

It was a grey and dismal morning and it poured down until lunchtime so I was disinclined to go out for a walk. The weather tidied itself up a bit over lunchtime so I drifted over for a nosy round the local park to try to nudge myself out of the usual November slump. A meadow pipit flying over as I walked down the road reminded me that the weather's going to get colder this week.

All the action was going on in the treetops of the Lombardy poplars along the old Old Hall Lane. Forty-odd starlings bubbled and squeaked before flying off into the gardens down the road. A few goldfinches twittered about and some blue tits and a great tit dangled from the ends of twigs. I must remember to bring something with me next time, the magpies were giving me that body language the cat's so eloquent about just before breakfast.

Barton Clough 

I was telling myself that the old cornfields were a lot quiet — just a few robins setting out their Winter territories and a couple of blackbirds fossicking about in the brambles — when a couple of dozen goldfinches flew in and settled in the hawthorns in the United Utilities compound. 

It's still not been cold enough for the redwings to be coming in to the park. Looking round there's not much in the way of berries, the blackbirds, squirrels and woodpigeons have had a feast of it over the past couple of months. It's vanishingly unlikely we'll be hosting any waxwings here this Winter.