Pennington Flash

Female goldeneye

The morning was damper than promised, that thin, persistent rain that makes your whole being damp and cold, so I shelved plans A and B which involved spending hours in wide open spaces with no cover. 

I watched the crowd scene in the back garden over a very slow breakfast, a couple of dozen sparrows on the feeders with full supporting cast. In the end I concluded there was just the one goldcrest in the sycamores but there were two coal tits in the garden though they weren't operating as a pair, coming in and out from opposite directions.

A bit of cover and a few hides seemed in order so I got the 126 from the Trafford Centre to Leigh and arrived at Pennington Flash for lunchtime. The sun was threatening to come out when I left home but it turned into an afternoon of eternal twilight, which made bird photography a bit challenging at times.

Damp underfoot 

The pedestrian access via St Helens Road was as bad as ever. I felt the use of high ridges of tarmac and gravel piled across the entrances to the old parking spaces ready to herd the Christmas rush to the pay-as-you-go parking was rather rubbing our noses in it in the circumstances. Robins and woodpigeons sang and great tits bounced about in the hedgerows. 

The brook was running high

I can't remember the brook ever being as high as it was today. A few coots fussed about in the fast moving water near the bridge.

Pochard

There were more coot on the flash by the cat park, together with rafts of pochards, tufted ducks and black-headed gulls. Mallards, mute swans, Canada geese and a couple of Muscovy ducks mooched for food on the car park, the swans checking bags and pockets just in case.

Mute swan

Further out on the flash were scattered groups of gulls, mostly herring gulls and black-headed gulls with a dozen or so lesser black-backs identifiable in the gloom. Half a dozen great black-backs steamed across the flash like a royal yacht review by Ming the Merciless. It took a while to spot the few great crested grebes out on the water and even longer to find the goldeneyes.

Goldeneye

From the Horrocks Hide

The Horrocks spit was underwater save a crescent of high ground at the end. Mallards loafed on the end closest to the hide. It was standing room only at the other end with cormorants, herring gulls and mallards loafing and bathing and thirty-something lapwings jostling for the high ground. There were a couple of lesser black-backs amongst the herring gulls and a first-Winter great black-back dozed amongst the cormorants. I looked in vain for any teal on the spit although I could hear them whistling. I'd find them later on. There were a couple of redhead goosanders loafing on the bank. I couldn't find any waders other than lapwings until the car park oystercatcher walked across my field of view. If I could not notice a big black-and-white wader with a stonking great red beak I could easily not notice all sorts of things so I had another look round and could only find lapwings.

Cormorant, herring gulls, lesser black-backs, great black-back, goosanders and lapwings

Black-headed gulls, herring gulls, cormorants and goldeneye

There was a raft of black-headed gulls and herring gulls over in the mouth of the Ramsdales bight. There were also about fifty tufted ducks and at least a dozen Goldeneye. And yet more cormorants loafing on poles and the flooded breeding rafts.

Cormorants

I turned onto the path to the Tom Edmondson Hide and walked into a flock of a hundred or so finches feeding on the alders. It was roughly equal numbers of goldfinches and siskins with a few blue tits, all very busy and all just silhouette in the gloom as far as the camera was concerned. A few chaffinches were picking up any litter on the ground, I couldn't turn any into bramblings.

Pennington Flash 

The sole occupant of the pool across from the Tom Edmondson Hide was a female GoldenEye, which shows how high the water was today..

Gadwalls, shovelers and mallards dabbled and dozed at the Tom Edmondson Hide. There was only the one teal to be seen.

From Ramsdales Hide 

It turned out that all the teal were on the pool at Ramsdales, though not many could be seen. They were mostly dozing in the reeds and tall grasses of the drowned islands or lurking in the reedbeds on the far side. Long-tailed tits bounced about in the elderberry bushes by the hide and a skein of twenty-six pink-footed geese could be seen in the distance flying towards Plank Lane.

Walking back, a goldcrest and half a dozen blue tits constituted the nearest to a mixed tit flock I saw all afternoon. A pair of bullfinches tweeted mournfully in the hawthorns and the mixed flock of finches twittered in the alders.

Pengy's pool 

Pengy's pool was busy with coots. There were perhaps half as many gadwall and shovelers as on my last visit, all at the far end by the reedbeds.

The view from the Bunting Hide was forlorn. The area's still flooded, the volunteers have had their work cut out catching up after all the disruption of the building works. And we're also in the middle of an avian flu pandemic so they might be leaving the feeding stations be as a precautionary measure. 

Walking to the Charlie Owen Hide 

I only properly realised how gloomy the afternoon had become when I tried photographing the goosanders on the Charlie Owen pool and my camera told me it would be doing one-eighth of a second exposures. And even then the pictures were white flashes in the dark. There were a couple of dozen goosanders with a couple of tufted ducks. The islands the ducks usually loaf on were under four inches of water.

Lesser black-back

All the while there was a steady stream of large gulls flying over to roost on the flash. There were a lot more herring gulls than lesser black-backs amongst the large gulls. Jackdaws were congregating in their hundreds to roost in the trees on the golf course and I made my way home.