Pennington Flash

Reed bunting

It was more than high time for the year's first visit to Pennington Flash. I got the 126 over to Leigh, struck lucky with the number 10 and only took just over an hour to get over there. It was a grey, breezy sort of a day but fine enough for pottering about with.

The footpath into Pennington Flash 

The path into Pennington Flash from St Helens Road was as atrocious as ever and the piles of hardcore cutting off the free parking looked even higher than they did last time. The water was a lot lower, with the brook receded from the banks and some of the Horrocks spit above water.

Crossing the brook I bumped into a mixed tit flock in the trees including my first treecreeper of the year and a couple of goldcrests. Oddly enough, no great tits.

Black-headed gulls

The wind was brisk as a crowd of mallards, black-headed gulls and Canada geese loitered in the car park with a couple of Muscovy ducks. There were more black-headed gulls nearby on the flash with a raft of tufted ducks and a couple of drake pochards. There were more tufties further out with a couple of dozen goldeneyes and a few dozen large gulls, roughly equal numbers of herring gulls and lesser black-backs and half a dozen great black-backs. There was another large raft of mostly unidentifiable large gulls way over at the sailing club side, there looked to be a few great black-backs in there, too. Oddly enough I couldn't see any great crested grebes about today, it's not often I don't see any here. There might have been a couple of hundred coots. I was trying to work out whether three black blobs bobbing about in the distant waves were coots or goldeneyes caught in silhouette when two of them raised themselves up to shake the water off their wings and let me identify them as drake common scoters.

From the Horrocks Hide 

Lapwings, cormorants, Canada geese and herring gulls

At the Horrocks Hide about half of the spit was exposed but only half of that was occupied, almost exclusively by lapwings and cormorants though the car park oystercatcher managed to muscle its way into the crowd. An incoming great black-back spooked the lapwings and they wheeled around for a good five minutes before settling back down. All the while the wind was getting up and the sky getting darker so I decided to make tracks for some more sheltered birdwatching.

Lapwings 

Lapwings 

I could hear teal on Pengy's pool but could only see mute swans, shovelers and gadwall through the hedgerow. There were half a dozen teal on the pool at the Tom Edmondson Hide together with more tufties and gadwall and a pair of mute swans. A couple of buzzards flew over the trees, sparring and tumbling before flying off over the golf course and beyond.

At the Tom Edmondson Hide 

Tufted ducks 

I definitely felt the wind blowing in at Ramsdales Hide and so did the crowd of teal, most of which were hugging the banks of the pool and islands for a sheltered doze (teal and shovelers seem to sleep almost as much as the cat I live with). A couple of herons stalked the far bank and a drake goosander escorted two lady friends out into the bight. It took me a while to find the dabchicks hinneying in the reeds.

At Ramsdales Hide

As I came out of the hide two willow tits popped out of the dogwoods, gave me the once-over, made disapproving noises and joined a family of long-tailed tits in the willow scrub. A couple of dozen goldfinches twittered in the tops of the alder trees by the path, I'm going to have to wait for my first redpolls of the year.

Great tit

I'd worried that the feeding stations at the Bunting Hide had been abandoned after last year's avian flu outbreak but they're back in business with the blue tits, great tits and reed buntings on the feeders, the squirrels and robins raiding the sunflower seeds in the pieces of hollow branches and a dozen moorhens clearing up after them all below.

Grey squirrel 

The wind had blown the rain in so I made tracks for home. When I got into Leigh I had three-quarters of an hour to wait for the 126 so I got the 35 to Manchester thinking I could get one of the buses to the Trafford Centre from Monton, something I've done umpteen times before. Today this turned out to be a huge mistake (think of something huge and make it bigger). All went well until we passed through Worsley when we hit a gridlock. An hour later we'd made the three hundred yards to Monton Circle, the driver managed to negotiate a path through the gridlock onto Monton Road which was dead clear on our side of the road (and going nowhere on the other) and then got a call ordering him to chuck us all off and go back to the depot. In the end I walked into Eccles, got a bus to the Trafford Centre, another into Urmston and walked home. I'll steer clear of Monton and Swinton for the foreseeable until the roadworks season is over.

Despite the weather and the buses it had been a good afternoon's birdwatching bringing the year list up to 116.

By the Bunting Hide