Leigh

By the car park at Pennington Flash
Canada geese, mute swans and mallards

Pennington Flash was due a visit and there are a few sites in the area that I've still not got round to this year so I thought I'd make a walk of it. I went over to Wigan, got the 610 and got off at Golborne High School for a walk through Byrom Hall Wood and then through the wood onto Slag Lane and thence onto Pennington Flash. And so I did, with a variation on the original plan that turned out in my favour.

I need to remember that the way into Byrom Hall Wood from Lowton Road is via Farm Croft Drive just before the school, not the road just after which goes to the water treatment works and a dead end. I retraced my steps, crossed the school playing field and joined the path into the woods. The trees were busy with singing chiffchaffs and blackcaps, the hedgerows with house sparrows and goldfinches and the field with woodpigeons and carrion crows including one very noisy young crow being fed by a parent. Swallows hawked low over the field by the farm buildings and reed buntings sang from deep in the thistles.

Byrom Hall Wood 

Looking over to Lightshaw Meadows and Abram

Through the gate and a little way beyond the path runs against the edge of the meadows that open out over to Abram. (I keep meaning to do that walk over Lightshaw Lane to Abram, it's the last gap in my walking round here.) There was the constant hum of bees and hoverflies in the brambles by the path, reassuring in this day and age. I walked round the edge of the field hoping to get sight of the pool round the corner here but the vegetation was too high. I walked back to the path, tiptoeing past ringlet butterflies and meadow browns and having swallows zip by at shin height.

Not entirely forsworn mud for the Summer

I followed the path through the next gate and into the wood. Blackcaps, blackbirds, song thrushes and chiffchaffs sang, goldfinches and greenfinches twittered in the trees, magpies rattled and woodpigeons barged about in the treetops. For all that the birds I kept seeing were jays, everything else kept under cover of leaves. The path got interesting in places and it was with a great sense of relief that I crossed the brook and joined the metalled circular path that leads out to Slag Lane.

Blackbird, Byrom Hall Wood

The path led to more open country where blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the trees and whitethroats from the hawthorn scrub. Greenfinches and goldfinches bounced about in the bushes, blackbirds and wrens rummaged about in the undergrowth and robins and great tits silently disappeared into the shadows as I passed. Swifts and swallows hawked overhead, the swallows at treetop height, the swifts a little higher. Higher yet was a small flock of house martins.

Byrom Hall Wood 

I joined the path to Byrom Hall, house sparrows joining the whitethroats in the fields and a buzzard floating over the treetops towards Slag Lane.

Byrom Hall 

I carried on to Slag Lane and didn't take the opportunity of the 588 to Leigh turning up as I got to the bus stop. I carried on, heading for the entrance to Pennington Flash just South of the canal. Song thrushes sang, whitethroats churred their exception to my passing, woodpigeons and black-headed gulls flew to and fro overhead.

Not my usual path into Pennington Flash 

Opposite the recycling centre I noticed a path running into Pennington Flash that I've overlooked before. On a whim I took it. It was a narrow path running between overgrown hedgerows fringed with reedbeds. Goldfinches and whitethroats paid me no heed as I brushed by, the chiffchaffs and dunnocks were a bit more shy. A couple of the goldfinches sang in the tops of bushes, a couple of blackbirds sang from overhead wires and the singing reed buntings out in the open nearly drowned out all else. I kept getting tantalising views of the flash, together with its mute swans and gulls, beyond the reedbeds. As I crossed Hey Brook a flash of electric blue shot down from the bridge and out of sight upstream, the first kingfisher I've seen for months.

Goldfinch, Pennington Flash

The path skirted Mossley Hall, a noisy family of kestrels calling in its tall trees, and joined Byrom Lane. I let on to the flock of guinea fowl sharing the field with a few cattle then walked down the lane. There's a sharp turn not far along and almost immediately a side road goes off towards Sorrowcroft Farm. I headed down here, this eventually becomes the path that runs along the Southern edge of the flash and then round to the car park. This is the way I came the first time I visited Pennington Flash and got hopelessly lost (and the reason why I include introductory site maps in this blog in case anyone readers fancy a look round).

Pennington Flash 

I joined the path along the flash, a small flock of sand martins passing overhead as I walked along. Mute swans, coots and great crested grebes went about their business near to the bank and paid no heed to fishermen, giddy spaniels or passing old men with binoculars round their necks. Four common terns noisily wheeled around the flash. Eventually two went their own way, one to spend the next half hour shouting from one of the buoys while a couple fished the near shore. A Cetti's warbler had a moment's song in a patch of brambly reeds at the waterside, whitethroats in the patches of scrub, blackcaps in the trees and chiffchaffs well nigh everywhere. It was all very pleasant even if the heavy, humid weather was draining.

Coots and great crested grebe, Pennington Flash

I had a sit down at the first available bench to have a long scan round the flash. A willow tit came over to check out what I was about, decided I wasn't a threat and jumped into a hawthorn bush to sing. I hear a willow tit sing perhaps once a year if I'm lucky and it's a surprise every time. Out on the flash there were large rafts of coots, groups of mute swans and mallards peppered the water, and a huge squadron of Canada geese cruised the far bank by the car park. Great crested grebes tended to be in pairs, black-headed gulls in ones and two (most of them were flying about) and ones and twos of tufted ducks lurked near reedbeds. A raft of a few dozen large gulls midwater near the sailing club was more lesser black-backs than herring gulls.

When I see drake common scoters on inland waters this time of year the inner monologue goes: Is that a scoter? No, it'll be a coot. It's down now, definitely a coot. Where's it got to? That's a funny head shape for a coot. Could do with it facing this way. It will have been a coot. Ah. Since when do coots have long tails? Today was no exception.

Black-headed gulls, mallards, coots, Canada geese and mute swans, Pennington Flash

Canada geese and mallards, Pennington Flash

Black-headed gull, Pennington Flash

I walked round and as I walked through the car park I scanned the crowd half in the hope that the Egyptian geese that used to be regular July arrivals might have turned up. You can but hope. The only dragonfly of the day was a Southern hawker that zipped by, stopped on the hover to eyeball me then shot off towards the visitor centre. The scoter was nearer this bank, the yellow on its bill making it unmistakable.

Lesser black-back and common scoter, Pennington Flash

Juvenile lapwing, Pennington Flash

The young lapwings on the Horrocks spit were full grown but still with scaly wings and short crests. Moorhens were making baby moorhens, mallards dozed and cormorants dried their wings at the end of the spit. After teasing me all along the far bank one of the terns took pity on me and posed for the camera on the compass post.

Mallard and moorhens, Pennington Flash

Common tern, Pennington Flash

The usual reed warbler was singing lustily on the pool opposite the Tom Edmondson Hide and was drowned out by an astonishingly loud reed bunting. The usual Cetti's warbler called a couple of times but didn't sing.

The reed warblers' pool 

A small group of gadwalls, including a duck with five young ducklings, lurked in one corner of the pool at the Tom Edmondson Hide while a dozen mallards drifted and dabbled in the middle. A pair of dabchicks in the far corner were heard far more than they were seen, similarly the herons in the treetops beyond.

At Ramsdales Hide 

The reeds in front of Ramsdales Hide had been slashed back this Spring to improve visibility, they've sprung back up with a vengeance and not much can be seen beyond. I could just about see a dozen mallards asleep at one end of an island and a couple of lapwings fussing about on the water's edge. Teal and more lapwings could be heard but not seen. There was a bit of movement in the short vegetation on another island just about visible through the reeds that turned out to be three common sandpipers. They don't often come in threes.

Pengy's Pool 

I had a brief look at Pengy's Pool on the way back, a few mallards dozing at the side while a common tern fished midwater. The Bunting Hide had a lot of great tits and a huddle of teenagers who, quite properly, didn't require an audience. I called it a day, walked across the golf course and headed for the bus stop by Pennington Hall Park and thence home. As the 25 from the Trafford Centre passed under the M60 I happened to glance up at one of the lampposts by the road and was surprised to see the local buzzard sitting on top of it.