Local patch

Lostock Park 

I caught up with my sleep and woke up to a bright, warm, sunny day and the wind blowing a hooley. Perfect weather for seawatching so the trains were on strike. The birds in the garden were keeping their heads down as best could, as were the crowd of woodpigeons across the road. I decided I'd have a wander round the local patch then have a think about where, or if, I'd move on to next.

Lostock Park 

Most of the small birds in the park were keeping to cover and it wasn't always easy to tell where the few calls making themselves heard over the wind were coming from. A couple of blackbirds, a robin and a great tit sang in the trees, a wren sang from the undergrowth. A blue tit churred at me and made sure I was on my way before sidling into its nest hole. Out on the playing field a few magpies fossicked around in the grass, there were more of them in the poplars by the path.

Barton Clough
Somebody did a tidy-up of the bramble patches with a strimmer so now there's an impenetrable carpet of ground elder. Not so good for the whitethroats that nested in the brambles, either 

I walked round to the footpath into the old cornfields. A chiffchaff sang in an elder bush by the path — to be honest I'd have struggled to hear it had it not been three feet above my left ear. Last time I visited there had been two chiffchaffs singing, one at either end of the site, leaving this central territory empty. I shall be optimistic and hope we'll have the full complement of three singing territories this year. The wrens and great tits were equally hard to hear and I only saw the one goldfinch and that by accident because it was disturbed out of a hawthorn by a windblown leaf.

Just as I'd satisfied myself that all the butterflies were windblown leaves a peacock butterfly flew backwards into my face, settled on my shoulder for a breather then lurched into the cover of the nearest bramble patch. It was that sort of a day.

Barton Clough