Carrington Moss

Carrington Moss 

It was a bright sunny day after a clear, cool night and I thought it was high time I took a look at Carrington Moss, I've not been there yet this year. I got the 255 to Carrington and the walk down Isherwood Road didn't seem so very long as it used to, I'm not sure if that's because I'm doing so much walking or because the new housing estate makes the industrial stretch seem shorter. Robins, song thrushes, coal tits and woodpigeons singing in the trees were a good omen.

Carrington Moss 

The fields were still wet and unploughed, the field drains freshly re-excavated. Skylarks sang and carrion crows fossicked about in the wet stubble. Orange tips and brimstones fluttered about the path margins and my first damselfly of the year — a large red — zipped past and vanished almost as quickly as I saw it.

The black-headed gulls colony on the Shell Pool was making a racket. Looking through the fence I could see at least a hundred gulls. How many of them had nests on the go I couldn't say, except that it was more than the dozen sitting birds I could actually see through the trees. A few Canada geese and mallards were trying to sleep despite the noise. Somebody in the hide by the pool was watching a dabchick subdue and swallow a fair-sized minnow. 

Carrington Moss 

I turned onto the wooded lane between the fields. I noticed another birdwatcher spending a long time at the crossing of the lanes further down then walking slowly across towards the road. I'd be meeting him later. The path had more than its fair  share of deep puddles to avoid but rarely was it bad to walk on. Blackcaps and song thrushes sang in the trees, wrens and robins bounced about in the undergrowth. A raven flew overhead towards the electricity substation with a substantial something in its beak and flew back empty-handed. 

Grey partridges 

Scanning the field on the right I found a couple of carrion crows scratching about. Then something caught my eye, a greyish patch in the stubble was blowing oddly in the wind. It turned out to be the feathers on the back of the neck of one of a pair of grey partridges hunkered down in the stubble. I walked down a bit and scanned over to have another look at them and really struggled to see them even though I knew where they were. It was their orange faces gave them away in the end.

The birdwatcher was still at the crossroads and we let on to each other. He'd found a male ring ousel having a drink on the path to the road and got a couple of photos before it disappeared into the hawthorn hedge. He was sitting tight waiting to see if it would reappear either on the path or on the field by the hedge. I wished him luck and had a quick look at the hawthorn hedge hoping to find some yellowhammers and finding a couple of pairs of goldfinches. And the male ring ousel which poked its head out at the end of the hedge. I took a quick snap and retreated. Had there been nobody else about I would have wandered down and hoped for a better view but I'd seen the bird and didn't want to put the mockers on it for anyone else. I walked back to the crossroads and told the other chap what I'd seen, wished him luck again and headed down the path towards Sinderland Brook. 

Spot the ring ousel

Carrington Moss 

I hadn't gone far when a small flock of finches twittered through the birch trees. At first I thought it was a flock of siskins because a pair of they were the first ones I got a good look at but they were just passing by and heading in a different direction to the rest of the flock which turned out to be a dozen lesser redpolls. They made sure to keep the sun right behind them most of the time before flying off in a panic when a particularly noisy track back rattled past.

Any time you're looking for wheatears passing through on passage check out the corners of the fields where the ploughed up rubbish and excavations from land drains are dumped.

I kept scouring the fields as I walked along, hoping for something yellow flitting about. I'm seeing so few yellowhammers these days that I'm sure it's not my fieldcraft at fault, there's something wrong with the local population. A flash of orange and silver bouncing round a rough corner of field could only be a wheatear. A few more minutes' looking round found two or three more, all rather distant and all rather active.

Helmeted guineafowl, not being added to the year list

At the bottom of the path I turned left by the farm and headed for the old railway line that ran between Cadishead and Altrincham. This takes you alongside Sinderland Brook, past Altrincham Water Treatment Works into Stamford Brook Community Woodland and into Broad Heath. It's a dead straight walk largely overgrown by mature birch scrub and ash trees. 

Walking to Sinderland Brook 

The singing blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and willow warblers kept a constant chorus. Most of the small birds flitting between hedgerow and undergrowth were robins or great tits with a few chaffinches and goldfinches to stop it getting predictable. A small, pale object flew across into some birch saplings and I stopped to try and find it. Two partridges that had been hiding in the brambles by the path decided this would be a good time to give me and the long-tailed tit a fright by heaving up and flying into the adjoining field. A male pheasant tried the same trick but much more clumsily a couple of hundred yards further down.

Sinderland Brook 

I checked out the horse paddocks by the water treatment works. A cattle egret had been seen there at the beginning of the week. It hadn't been seen since but I'd have been cross with myself had it turned out I'd walked past it without looking.

Wood anemones, Stamford Brook Community Woodland 

There were yet more chiffchaffs, robins, blackbirds and blackcaps singing in Stamford Brook Community Woodland and plenty of great tits, blue tits and dunnocks rummaging about. I took the path by the edge of the housing estate and was just in time to catch the 247 to Altrincham and thence home after a very good afternoon stroll. A pair of ravens mobbing a buzzard over Altrincham Retail Park was just the icing on the cake.

A bit of the old Cadishead to Altrincham line