Wellacre Country Park

Stock dove and woodpigeons 

It was a grey and windy day and that wind had a nasty bite to it, I was feeling lazy so I parked plans A to E and had a toddle round Wellacre Country Park.

Wellacre Wood 

I got the 256 into Flixton and walked down into Wellacre Wood. The paths were muddy but enough bits had dried out over the past week for me not to have to take any detours. The bramble patch by the entrance was busy with house sparrows and blackbirds and there was a passage of black-headed gulls overhead going who knows where because they were back ten minutes later. Robins and great tits sang but were drowned out by the screeching of a pair of ring-necked parakeets by the school. In the wood proper, out of the wind, pairs of great tits, wrens and blue tits flitted about in the undergrowth and long-tailed tits bounced their way through the treetops. 

Out in the open the wind was keen and the titmice, spadgers and dunnocks kept to the hedgerows. Small parties of woodpigeons and magpies fed in the fields, carrion crows serenaded each other in hawthorn trees and more black-headed gulls flew over to the water treatment works. A couple of pairs of pigeons dropped down for a drink in a big puddle, almost rock dove types save the checkerboard markings on their wings. A pair of stock doves flew overhead, blue compared to the pigeons' purple-grey. Over by the water treatment works a flock of fifty-odd starlings wheeled about before settling on one of the filtration pans.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

Jack Lane was quiet. A great tit called from the willows and a water rail called from somewhere in the reeds. I disturbed a jay and a buzzard that were perching in a tree round the corner of the path and both were too quick for me and my camera. A drake mallard flew in, settled on one of the pools in the reeds, did a lot of quacking and flew off again. The noise of a flock of finches flying out of the hedgerow turned out to be an oak tree losing the last of its leaves in the wind.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

I walked by the embankment towards Dutton's Pond. There were stock doves with the woodpigeons in the fields and jays in the willows on the embankment.

Dutton's Pond goes a bit Royston Vasey

There are new scarecrows on Dutton's Pond and the mallards and moorhens take no notice of them. They might put off passing herons, though.

Green Hill 

I walked through onto Green Hill. Great tits mimicked the creaking of the willows and birches in the wind. Out in the open there were more great tits in the hawthorns and gorse, together with pairs of blue tits, wrens and long-tailed tits. I shivered and reminded myself that there'd soon be whitethroats and chiffchaffs singing in the scrub. For a fleeting minute the sun found a hole in the cloud and lit up the scenery before retreating and pretending nothing had happened.

Green Hill 

Green Hill 

Dropping down towards the river there were more titmice and wrens in the undergrowth and pairs of chaffinches tweeted at each other in the treetops. The horses in the fields were plenty outnumbered by magpies and woodpigeons. There were more magpies bouncing round in the trees by the river but there were no waterbirds about. Over on the fields by Flixton Road a pair of oystercatchers called loudly in the company of fifty-odd black-headed gulls that were loafing in a big puddle, there were twenty-odd woodpigeons feeding on a drier patch of ground.

There wasn't time, and I didn't have the energy or inclination, to walk down to Carrington Moss so I called it quits and got the buses home.