Frodsham Marsh

Yellow wagtail 

It was a lovely sunny morning and I thought I'd best get a visit to Frodsham in before the end of the singing season. It was going to be cloudy later and there was a yellow warning for rain overnight so if I was going to get a walk out in the open on uncertain paths done this week today was the best bet. I slathered on the sunblock and smeared vaseline round my nostrils and toddled off to the station.

Moorditch Road 

I got off the train at Frodsham, walked down the main road then over the motorway on Moorditch Road and onto the marsh. The weather brought out the butterflies, including at long last my first comma of the year, and I had to hang about for a few minutes while the spadgers finished their dust bathing before I could go over the motorway bridge. Blackbirds, blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the hedgerows, goldfinches twittered between fields and whitethroats sang from hawthorn bushes in the fields. A flock of rooks accompanied the horses in one of the fields.

No.6 Lagoon and Frodsham Wood Hill 

Mallards

I climbed up to No.6 Lagoon. Most of the usual precarious footways up to the top of the bank of the lagoon were an impenetrable mass of nettles, thistles and ragwort or were screened by dense hawthorns so I didn't get a good look at it until halfway down. The water was high and there was no exposed mud for waders to be found on. A few coots fussed about in one corner, a raft of a couple of dozen tufted ducks dozed at the deep end and sixty-odd mallards drifted about at the shallow end. I looked in vain for gadwall, shovelers or teal. A couple of dabchicks hinneyed by the near bank and a buzzard soared overhead unheeded by the ducks.

It was the odd time of year where you see sedge warblers and reed warblers long before you hear them and most of the time they only sing when they've seen you. There were plenty of both as well as chiffchaffs and whitethroats. For once I didn't hear or see a single Cetti's warbler all day here. The most persistent singers were reed buntings and blackbirds. There wasn't a lot doing out on the marsh that was visible from the path. Four carrion crows mobbed a passing raven. Crows tend to harass buzzards and harriers just because they're there, there's real intent when they mob sparrowhawks and ravens.

Walking beside No.6 Lagoon

It is a rule of life that you'll be passing between a high bank and a tall, thick hedge of hawthorns and elderflowers when a male marsh harrier passes ten feet over the path just ahead of where you're walking and that it will have disappeared over the marsh when you finally get to a gap in the hedge with your camera at the ready. It just is and you have to learn to accept it. About twenty minutes later I saw a female hunting over the marsh out by the river.

Another passing raven put up a small flock of lapwings and black-headed gulls that been hidden by a bank in one of the fields. They settled back down and disappeared beneath the bank. The handful of teal that could be seen dozing by the little pool there didn't move a muscle. I recalled that this was where I couldn't see a green-winged teal a while back so I gave them all a good stare before moving on.

Small tortoiseshell

Red admiral

Gatekeeper 

The clouds rolled in quickly and the weather was getting muggy. The ragworts were busy with butterflies, the first time this Summer I've seen crowds of small tortoiseshells and red admirals and I was reminded that small heaths are very small indeed. The meadow browns and gatekeepers were abundant and very fidgety and very distracting when you're trying to work out what the small birds are hopping about in the bases of bushes. Most turned out to be wrens, dunnocks and blue tits, some were reed warblers or linnets. There weren't any swifts about which was odd because they were swarming over the houses in Frodsham.

The cattle on the rough grazing were all lying down, as were half the sheep which is never a good sign. Any time I see cattle in rough grazing West of Runcorn I check for egrets of one kind or another. There were none to be seen today. A flock of starlings meandered through the bodies and here and there a greylag or a Canada goose poked its head above the grass. Somewhere far out a skylark was singing.

Lapwings and mallards

There were a dozen mallards and half a dozen teal with the coots and moorhens on the phalarope pool. One of the mallards had tiny ducklings with her and she seemed intent that the half-grown lapwings on the bank were some sort of threat to them. They scuttled out of the way sharpish. The deeper pool next to it was littered with tufted ducks.

Frodsham Wood Hill 

Lordship Lane 

I followed the path round and down onto Lordship Lane where chaffinches and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, goldfinches twittered and sang well nigh everywhere and the road was a crazy paving patchwork of deep puddles. I'd be disappointed if it were otherwise. The weather got warmer and muggier and very uncomfortable indeed. I was wondering what was turning the wind turbines because the air was dead still along the road. The answer came when I got to a field opening and spent half a minute enjoying a very welcome breeze. I decided I wasn't going over Holpool Gutter and through the chemical works to see if I could have a nosy at Insch Marshes.

I was halfway down Rake Lane on my way to Helsby when it started raining. Random big blobs of rain, nothing steady but a hint of things to come. Luckily I had my cap on and wouldn't get wet. Swallows skimmed low over the fields of barley and young swallows begged noisily from the telephone wires. A yellow wagtail wheezed noisily from a wire as I passed, and well he might given the beakful of insects he was carrying.

Swallows and yellow wagtail

Juvenile swallow begging and male yellow wagtail 

The house martins flitted about Helsby Station when I arrived and I was extremely grateful for a sit down. I'd only been walking about three hours but for the past hour the weather had been draining. I had ten minutes to wait for the train. "It's still only mid-afternoon, we can move on to another site," said a voice in the back of my head. The rest of me told it not to be so bloody silly.

I really don't know why I neglect Frodsham like I do. It felt like a very quiet, nothing doing walk but I still chalked up forty-odd species of birds along the way.