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| Goosander |
I woke up from one of those nights where every battle for territorial control of the bed was lost to the cat and found myself facing a bright, sunny day. Half an hour later itchy eyes and ears set me wondering what was going on. I checked the weather forecast to see if I needed to worry about any showers and found the pollen count was Very High, an unwelcome escalation of hostilities. I parked all the plans for today and decided I'd have a late afternoon walk when things might be slightly better.
Across the road, in between sessions where PE teachers exercise their vocal chords, there were a couple of dozen adult lesser black-backs with the usual selection of magpies, woodpigeons and jackdaws. This has been par for the course all week. Lesser black-backs are our default Summer gulls but there's a lot more than usual about this year with dozens of them circling round Trafford Park whenever I've been through.
I noticed reports that the weekend's lesser scaup over at Ringley was still around so, lathered in sun block, a nose full of vaseline and a song in my heart I headed over to the Trafford Centre to get the 22 to Clifton, the plan being to cut through Clifton Country Park, bob over the bridge and have a shufti at the sewage works where it was last reported. Lesser scaup's still a new bird for me so I'm trying to take every opportunity to get my eye on on it.
The 22 is one of our longer local routes. Inevitably we hit the school run. In my experience the school run is one of those things ike half-term holidays, inescapable by the use of simple expedients like clocks or calendars. So it was late afternoon when I arrived at Clifton Cricket Club, crossed Manchester Road and headed down Clifton Hall Road to the country park.
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| Clifton Country Park |
Blackbirds, blackcaps, song thrushes and wrens provided the major part of the songscape. Here and there a chiffchaff might make itself heard or a goldfinch or a greenfinch. Families of great tits and blue tits stole through bushes like thieves in the night. The lake was littered with Canada geese and black-headed gulls, a few tufted ducks and mallards making up the numbers. A pair of great crested grebes cruised midwater, swallows and house martins hawked overhead.
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| Great crested grebe, Clifton Country Park |
I headed for the river and bumped into a chap who had also come over to look for the lesser scaup. We compared information: I was going off Birdguides which said Ringley and located the bird in the water treatment works there, his information said Ringley but located the bird a mile or more away in the abandoned water treatment works over the river on the other side of Clifton Country Park by the motorway. We went our different ways, each wishing the other good luck. I was suddenly not sure of seeing the bird at all.
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| River Irwell |
I wandered over to the river and crossed over to the water treatment works. A few mallards bobbed about on the river, a heron fished in the turbulent waters by the outflow and a couple of grey wagtails fussed about on the shingle banks.
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| Grey wagtail, Ringley |
The water treatment works have been in a constant state of reconstruction for years so it seemed an unlikely place to see a lesser scaup but I've seen rarities in stranger places so who knows. There were a dozen or so black-headed gulls floating about on the pans and lagoons visible from the road into Ringley but no ducks. There are paths I've not explored here so I had a wander round. The best bet seemed to be the path running from Ringley between Ringley Wood and the water treatment works. I walked the length of the path. Lots of woodland birdsong on one side, empty lagoons and pans on the other. So like as not if a lesser scaup was about it was at the abandoned site.
I walked back over to Clifton Country Park and walked along the path following the river. I reckoned I could walk down to Clifton Aquaduct, cross the river then walk back along the river to the abandoned works to look for the lesser scaup then walk back to the current works and head to either Stoneclough or Clifton for a bus. It's a walk I've done before but not one I've done in Summer and that turned out to make a difference.
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| Clifton Country Park |
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| Juvenile blackcap, Clifton Country Park |
All the usual woodland birds were singing in the trees along the path. Every so often I could get a clear view of the river. Hereabouts it runs wide and shallow over and between shelves of New Red Sandstone. A couple of times there was a handful of mallards loafing on a rocky bank or dabbling in the shallows, a few times a black-headed gull or two. I'd gone beyond the park, under the motorway and into Clifton Green before I found any goosanders, a pair of redheads dozing on a rock with a couple of lesser black-backs.
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| Goosander |
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| Lesser black-back |
Dodging cyclists on the extremely narrow banktop path next to the big construction works you see from the Bolton to Manchester train I found the path verge was a ribbon of common spotted orchids. It's a very long time since I've seen so many together.
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| Common spotted orchids |
It was late teatime and by this stage I was flagging badly, wiping my eyes and nose every few minutes. I crossed the aquaduct into Waterdale Meadows and decided I didn't have it in me for the walk back the other way. The best bet was to walk through the meadows into Drinkwater Park and get the 93 from Carr Clough into Manchester.
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| Waterdale Meadows |
Swifts and swallows hawked overhead and the willow warblers, whitethroats and grey wagtails of the meadows gave way to the blackcaps, chiffchaffs and pied wagtails of Drinkwater Park.
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| Drinkwater Park |
I decided on a direct route to the bus stop which would be twenty minutes quicker but involved taking one or other steep path up into the housing estate. I opted for the one to Grundy Avenue, it's as steep as the one to the playground but it doesn't crumble underfoot quite as alarmingly as you climb. Even so, partway up I remembered a rubbishy old Australian drama series called "The Flying Doctors" where a heart attack victim was dangling about six feet from the top of a rocky slope and these two cobbers with more safety gear than fifteen Himalayan climbing teams leaned over and shouted: "It's a dangerously crumbly rock surface, we're going to have to leave you to die here and cut you down later, sorry mate." The twittering of house sparrows in back gardens never sounded so sweet.
There wasn't long to wait for the 93. As every other single time I forgot there's a stop at Kersal Castle, I remembered the 52 to the Trafford Centre stops across the road and is due about ten minutes later and I apologised to the driver for rushing off the bus at the last minute. Every. Single. Time. I really should know by now. I idled the time waiting for the 52 watching a couple of dozen sand martins hawking over the river, a pair of tufted ducks by the bank and the mallards and black-headed loafing on the shingle banks downstream. A lunatic voice in my head told me I could have walked here from Drinkwater Park…
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