St Helens and Pennington Flash

Tufted duck and ring-necked duck, Taylor Park

A few nights' suboptimal sleep was making itself known so I scaled back the ambitions for the day. A drake ring-necked duck had been reported in a park in St Helens, I don't know St Helens particularly well so it seemed like an opportunity for a gentle toddle.

I got the train to Warrington, the bus to St Helens and the Liverpool bus out to Taylor Park to save my legs. I walked up Dunriding Road (no, really) and walked down Moxon Street into the park.

Tufted duck, Taylor Park

The lake is just by this entrance, a typical urban park lake with a path round the outside and a disused pavilion at one side, just like hundreds of others. In my, limited, experience ring-necked ducks visit these surprisingly often. I looked around. Coot, check… mallard, check… Canada geese, check… tufties, check… mute swans, check… small knot of blokes with binoculars at the corner fifty yards away, check.

Black-headed gulls, tufted duck and ring-necked duck, Taylor Park

The ring-necked duck was a bonny bird, never more than twenty feet away from the path and keeping close to a group of tufted ducks but never quite being part of the crowd. It was also trying to keep out of the way of a rather excitable bunch of black-headed gulls that had decided that tiny tots' going to feed the ducks meant them really and even a mute swan couldn't barge its way through 

Black-headed gull, Taylor Park

Ring-necked duck, Taylor Park

Ring-necked duck, Taylor Park

Ring-necked duck, Taylor Park

It's nice to see a drake ring-necked duck this close up. The plain pale grey underside turns out to be very finely vermiculated pale grey and white and if you're lucky you actually get to see the ring at the base of its neck. Today I got lucky, it wasn't a conspicuous ring by any means but it was there, as though the bird had recently had an elastic band around its neck. Why anyone chose that as the field marking to name it by is beyond me. The strongly patterned bill jumped out a mile even on a dull grey day that rendered most of my photographs monochrome.

Taylor Park 

I had a wander round the park, the robins and song thrushes singing in the trees while mixed tit flocks and chaffinches bounced their way through them. There was a big flock of pigeons on the disused pavilion, the sound of their claws on the slates of the roof being a suitable soundtrack for any creepy movie.

I got back to St Helens bus station and noticed that the 34 to Leigh was due in a couple of minutes so, on a whim, I got it and headed for a look at the gull roost at Pennington Flash.

Blackthorn blossom, Pennington Flash

I decided to give the muddy track to the car park a miss, taking the side path that leads to the South bank of the flash. Robins and song thrushes sang and a mixed tit flock rather noisily settled into the brambles for the night.

Pennington Flash 

The gull roost was well underway on the flash, with hundreds of herring gulls and black-headed gulls. There were a lot fewer lesser black-backs and handfuls of common gulls and great black-backs. This time of year most anything could be passing through and spending the night in the roost so I found a seat and spent a while scanning the rafts of large gulls. In this light some of the herring gulls, especially a few dark-headed looking birds that were big and chunky enough to be Scandinavian (argentatus) herring gulls, looked almost as dark as the common gulls. Some of the others looked very pale and a couple of times I got my hopes up for an Iceland gull then saw black tips to the wings as they swung round.

Mostly herring gulls with a few lesser black-backs and a goldeneye, Pennington Flash

Some of the black-headed gulls already had dark heads, many were piebald in moult. A distant black head in the crowd almost got dismissed as another black-headed gull until the herring gull in front of it moved out of the way so I could see my first Mediterranean gull of the year properly. Some of the other black heads in the crowd were goldeneyes, they were bobbing up and down like corks on the edges of the rafts of gulls. There was something different about one of gulls passing through with a crowd of black-headed gulls then I realised its small size wasn't due to perspective and it had dark underwings. It was flying very purposefully for a little gull, usually they dance in the air like butterflies but this one definitely had a sense of someplace to go.

I walked round to the car park where a crowd of mallards, Canada geese and black-headed gulls were helping a lady lighten her bag of breadcrumbs. Just offshore three male pochards bobbed up and down on the waves. A few dozen tufted ducks drifted about in small groups and a couple of great crested grebes cruised midwater. 

From Ramsdales Hide

The hides had been locked up so I had a bit of a wander and looked at the pools as best could. A couple of hundred lapwings left the spit at the Horrocks Hide, leaving behind a couple of dozen cormorants, a couple of herons, a little egret and the car park oystercatcher.

The coots, mute swans and tufted ducks were busy on Pengy's pool but I couldn't see any gadwalls or shovelers. A few teal hung about at Tom Edmondson's and a few more at Ramsdales where there were also a couple of redhead goosanders and a pair of willow tits.

Walking back I could compare and contrast the songs of the song thrushes in the trees by the flash and the mistle thrush in one of the trees on the golf course. I crossed the golf course and passed through Leigh Sports Village for the bus in to Leigh and the 126 to the Trafford Centre, for once making the connection with the 25 back home. I'd done a bit more than planned with the day and was ready for a kip.