Elton Reservoir

Garganey

Summer had been nice while it lasted but all good things come to an end and we settled back into a cool, grey and murky sort of a Friday. I should have taken the hint and had a day reading or writing or tidying the house but I got a lunchtime fit of the fidgets and headed off for Elton Reservoir.

The local trains rarely stop at Deansgate anymore — after the Ordsall Chord was completed the next phase was axed so the solution to the bottleneck caused by having only one track to service everything coming into Oxford Road and Piccadilly from the North, West and now also Manchester Victoria was to have half the trains no longer stopping at Deansgate — so I had to go over to Piccadilly for the tram to Bury which adds about half an hour to the journey time. There was a bit of a wait for the 471 at Bury Interchange, I got on the second one in the convoy and was walking down White Street towards Elton Reservoir ten minutes later.

Walking down the lane to the sailing club car park the hedgerows were full of birdsong: blackbirds, wrens, chiffchaffs, willow warblers, chaffinches and great tits with a song thrush somewhere in the background. Blue tits and coal tits fed on the sunflower feeders in the trees by the car park and the usual crowd of house sparrows fussed about in the bushes by the pathway onto the reservoir.

Mallards and ducklings

Canada geese, coots and a pair of mute swans loafed by the side of the path. A pair of mallards had some well-grown ducklings already showing half-grown flight feathers. There were more coots and some black-headed gulls further out on the reservoir. Scanning round the reservoir the three dozen swifts hawking over the water were the most obvious birdlife until about a hundred sand martins floated in and spent the next hour swooping and twittering low over the reservoir and the surrounding banks. Even if the light hadn't been vile I would have struggled to get any photos of them.

Coot

Sand martins
It might have been easier to try and photograph the midges.

A small raft of tufted ducks drifted over the far side of the reservoir and loafing herring gulls and lesser black-backs were liberally sprinkled about midwater. A few male great crested grebes cruised about making terrible noises at each other while the females were busy elsewhere.

Herring gull

Walking by the creek
Usually this path's a quagmire

The paths were astonishing. I've never found them so walkable outside drought conditions, there was literally only one spot where there was a danger of my getting my boots muddy (I didn't). Astonishing. The trees and hedgerows were thick with birds. The willow warblers and whitethroats were doing most of the running with the songscape with chiffchaffs, reed buntings and chaffinches doing most of the backing vocals then blackcaps joining in at the creek. Robins, wrens, blackbirds and titmice quietly went about their business in the trees.

Garganey 

Beyond the creek a pair of Canada geese kept their goslings close to hand on the near bank and pairs of shovelers, mallards and gadwalls dozed and drifted close by. There was a nice surprise at the far end of the reservoir: two drake garganeys were showing well very close to hand far too busy catching midges to worry about an old man watching them at it. I've kept missing garganeys this Spring, it's nice to have seen a brace of them so well. The downside was the light: I've got used to using the bridge camera now but there's a distinct drop in the quality of the photos in bad light. If the subject's a static object then most of this can be overcome by fiddling round with long shutter speeds and bracketed exposures, when it's a fidgety bird you just have to take what comes. Wide-angle landscapes offer no problem at all so I'm guessing it's something to do with the limitations of the jiggery-pokery involved in the digital zoom.

Garganeys

In the field beyond the reservoir starlings, woodpigeons and lapwings dodged about the horses and at least two lapwings sat on nests well away from the action.

Withins Reservoir 

I had a look at Withins Reservoir which is still drained and still doesn't look to be having anything done with it. The sand martins were fizzing around the place. There was a lot of courting going on which seemed to consist of small groups of three or four birds zipping around until each was whittled down to a pair of birds whizzing closer and closer to the muddy ground at the edge of the drained reservoir. Every so often a lead bird, presumably the female, would land and hop coquettishly on the ground quickly followed by the male. There'd be a couple of seconds of excited twittering as the male approached then the female would say: Not yet matey!" and fly off pursued by the male. They'd then chase round a bit more and land a few more times, chase about some more. I would guess that at least once in those landings some of the males get lucky. It was all a lot faster and more frenetic than it reads written down.

By the path from Withins Reservoir to the canal

I followed the path over to the canal. Willow warblers, greenfinches and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, robins and blackbirds rummaged about in the undergrowth, lapwings and woodpigeons flew about between fields. The clouds got darker, it started to drizzle then decided it couldn't be bothered. I decided not to push my luck by walking down the canal into Radcliffe town centre, I bobbed over the bridge and had ten minutes to wait for the 513 into Bury and thence home. The weather may have been miserable but it was a good walk.

Elton Reservoir