Cheshire bumper bundle

Dunnock, Moore

It was one of those days where the sun plays peek-a-boo and the cold wind overrides anything the thermometer cares to tell you. I made an early start, got the train to Warrington and got the 62 into Moore, getting off at Moore Lane so I only had a fifteen minute walk into Moore Nature Reserve. I was hoping the long-tailed duck might still be around but would take whatever was about (it's still that time of year where every time you step out of the house there's an addition to the year list).

I crossed the road and walked down Moore Lane towards Port Warrington. There were a lot of jackdaws and woodpigeons in the trees and fields; robins, great tits and blackbirds bustled about the hedgerows and a pair of ring-necked parakeets screeched in the trees by the stables near the canal.

Manchester Ship Canal 

I could just see the pool at Moore Quarry through the trees and the dozen tufted ducks steaming to and fro. There seemed to be a sense of purpose to it but I couldn't see what it was. Rafts of gadwalls and mallards drifted over the Ship Canal and a pair of great crested grebes cruised by the North bank. 

Great tit and blue tit, Moore

Over the bridge, into the nature reserve and the first port of call was the Lapwing Lane Hide. I'd been hearing the whistling of wigeon and teal and the hinneying of dabchicks on the way in. There were plenty of mallards, wigeons, tufties and teal but they were tending to be distant, or else hiding in the marginal reeds. Unlike the small birds feeding on the ground by the hide which were only just out of arm's reach, and the coal tits came in closer. Great tits, blue tits and coal tits in equal numbers, a couple each of robins and nuthatches and then a dozen chaffinches flew in (they were a bit more skittish about my being present at whatever feast they'd managed to find).

Coal tit, Moore

Chaffinch, Moore

Walking down Lapwing Lane there were more titmice and robins, another pair of parakeets explored the rotting timbers of some drowned willows and a couple of jays made themselves very unpopular with the blackbirds and chaffinches in the hedgerow. A few dozen siskins foraged noisily in the tops of the alders at the intersection of paths. I looked in vain for goldfinches or redpolls, which doesn't mean there weren't any about as there was a lot going on in some of the trees further back from the paths that I could only see as tiny silhouetted dots.

Lapwing Lane 

I turned onto the path going towards Birchwood Pool. The path had been surprisingly dry despite the high water in the pools either side. Then I crossed a bridge and got to a dip in the path and stopped. I threw a stone in to guage the depth of the water and decided to forgo the pleasure and walked back. It was too cold for going in beyond the ankles. Mallards loafed in the pools, pheasants called from the muddy depths of Lapwing Wood and a great spotted woodpecker rummaged about in a stand of wind-broken willows.

 

No. There are limits even to my stubbornness.

I walked back into Moore and found I had twenty minutes for the next 62 to Runcorn so I had a sit down by the Bridgewater Canal and had my lunch in the company of a couple of mallards and a coot. A lady came along and threw a few handfuls of birdseed onto the water, cue the appearance of a couple of dozen ravenous mallards!

Mallards, Moore

Mute swans, Spike Island 

I got the 62 to Runcorn and the 110 from Runcorn into Widnes, getting off at West Bank Street and walking through to Spike Island. The wind blowing down the Mersey was icy cold and very assertive. I had to pick my way through an unruly herd of mute swans to get over the lock, Scouse swans that hissed: "No lip from you, pal, I can break your nose with one blow of my wing." The hundred or so black-headed gulls braced against the wind on the railing tops were positively genteel in comparison.

Black-headed gulls, Spike Island

The river was fairly low with plenty of exposed mudbanks. Out on one of them in midstream half a dozen carrion crows were impatient to have their turn at whatever it was two great black-backs were devouring. There was a crowd of black-headed gulls by the mouth of the canal, there were a few more on the mudbanks but they were outnumbered by herring gulls. There weren't many common gulls or lesser black-backs about.

One gull caught my eye. It was difficult to judge scale at that distance and at first I thought it was a herring gull near to a couple of common gulls. Except that its back and wings were a couple of tones darker than the "common gulls" which were, in fact, herring gulls. There was a lesser black-back a few yards away, the gull with the grey back was slightly bigger and slightly taller. It seemed too dark to be a Scandinavian herring gull (some of them are huge), looked a lot sleeker and the wings were way too long, proportionately longer than the lesser black-back's. I'd promised myself I wasn't going to subject myself to any gullwatching this early in the year and there was an adult Caspian gull going: "Coo-ee!" It was too far away to get a useful photo, especially with the wind hitting the side of the lens to add blur to a distant figure.

Mersey Gateway Bridge from Spike Island 

Turning round into the bight behind Spike Island there were a dozen or so redshanks skittering about the gulls loafing on the nearest mudbank. I looked upstream in the hopes that the ruddy shelduck that seems to have settled round here was about. All the distant dark shapes turned out to be herons or juvenile gulls. I only saw the one common shelduck, flying downstream at a wind-assisted rate of knots. I spent a while looking round, thinking that if I could have overlooked the half a dozen teal asleep on the bank beside me I could have missed something further out, but found only gulls and herons.

Canada geese, Spike Island

There was a herd of Canada geese loafing on the bank a bit upstream and small groups of them on the river. One of the geese going ashore onto the bank baffled me. It was slightly smaller in the body than the others but a good deal shorter. I went through all the reasons why it wasn't a cackling goose (structurally it was a Canada goose and the bill wasn't stubby) or a Todd's Canada goose (it had a white collar and the white chinstrap wasn't broken and it just didn't look right for a Todd's). In the end I had to conclude it was just an odd-looking Canada goose, there are so many in this country and they're descended from all sorts of different escapes there's bound to be considerable variation.

I walked back to the bus stop and cursed as I watched the next 110 zip past three minutes early. I had to wait twenty-five minutes for the next but managed to get into Warrington just in time to run across the road and catch the train home. It had been a good day out and I'd enjoyed the birdwatching. The difference after a phenomenally grey and wet December is striking.