Mersey Valley

Buzzard, Stretford Meadows

I've had a lazy week and the joints in my knees were making no bones about it so I tottered off over to Stretford Meadows to have a wander about then find out where I got to.

The scratchings about by the living room window while I'm trying to read are either woodpigeons or squirrels, the both of them pinching boysenberries,

It was a cloudy day with a fair, cool breeze that made for pleasant walking weather. The spadgers on Newcroft Road grumbled mightily as I interrupted their dust baths (I could walk around them quite easily but they were disinclined to put much trust in that). 

Blackbirds, blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang as I negotiated the baked mud around the palettes at the entrance to the meadows and the first of what would be a proliferation of ringlet butterflies skittered about in the long grass. Great tits called in the trees and young robins made squeaky contact calls to their parents. A couple of wrens sang and another chiffchaff sang from the birch scrub by the path. There first of what would be a constant traffic of woodpigeons, carrion crows and jackdaws flew overhead.

Juvenile goldfinch, Stretford Meadows 

Out in the open meadows it was relatively quiet. Magpies muttered in the long grass but weren't often seen. A pheasant called from deep in a big clump of great willowherbs that could easily have hidden half a dozen sheep. A few whitethroats and reed buntings sang, rather more were fleeting figures skipping between hawthorn bushes or disappearing into thistle-deep grass. Small parties of goldfinches were already unpicking barely ripened heads of thistledown. The sun had brought out the ringlets and they were very active indeed, never settling for more than a second and even then not often. Every so often I'd see a touch of russet brown and think I'd found a gatekeeper or meadow brown and each time find it was the light glinting obliquely on the sooty chocolate brown wings of a ringlet. It came as a bit of a relief to bump into a couple of large skippers.

Stretford Meadows 

I was trying to get a photo of a latticed heath moth (and trying to remember that's what it's called) when I heard a buzzard calling in the nearby trees. It flew out and did a low circuit round before returning to the trees. There was an answering call from above. I looked up and saw three buzzards soaring high up, one rather higher than the others. The three drifted over this way and the calling got louder then the two lower birds disengaged and floated back over the motorway and calm was restored.

Northern marsh orchids gone to seed, Stretford Meadows 

I started off on the path down towards the cricket pitch, noting that the marsh orchids had all gone to seed, and hadn't gone a hundred yards before I almost trod on a young partridge. It was about three-quarters grown, a body of grey-brown fluff with grown-up wings and the diagnostic bright orange tail feathers of a grey partridge. I watched it fly off into the cover of some hawthorn scrub then got the shock of my life as three more flew off and followed it from the grass just in front of me.

The South slope of the rise, Stretford Meadows 

l wandered over to the metalled path, followed it up the rise then took the steep path down the other side, giving the hay fever a bit of a workout. A few more whitethroats, reed buntings and goldfinches sang in the hawthorns, greenfinches and song thrushes sang in the small oak trees South of the summit and a linnet and a lesser whitethroat sang in the scrub down the Eastern slope. A big green and blue flying pencil of an emperor dragonfly zipped past me on the summit, a pair of brown hawkers chased each other over the willowherbs by the Transpennine path as I reached it.

Juvenile dunnock

I walked down to Stretford Ees to a sporadic chorus of singing blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and wrens and the contact calling of goldfinches, blue tits and great tits. The pigeons had a couple of noisy new nests on the go under the tramline, the older youngsters were arrayed on the canal aquaduct.

Walking over to Stretford Ees

Stretford Ees was noisy with the songs of blackbirds and reed buntings and the squabbling of ring-necked parakeets in the trees.

I passed over the river, a grey wagtail fossicking about in the rocks at the bankside, and into Sale Water Park.

Great crested grebe, Sale Water Park
Watching a passing tern.

More blackbirds, blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the trees. Out on the lake a few lesser-blacks and black-headed gulls dozed midwater, a pair of mute swans mugged for scraps over on the far bank and a pair of great crested grebes cruised by the near shore. Low overhead a couple of common terns made a lot of noise of circling round the lake but never got round to diving for any fish. Mind you, the carp in this lake are enormous and would probably over face them.

Great crested grebe, Sale Water Park 

One of the grebes was the one that's had the damaged wing. At the moment it's flightless because it's moulted all the remaining flight feathers from its left wing.

Mallards, Broad Ees Dole 

A gang of eclipse male mallards cruised the teal pond at Broad Ees Dole. A couple of females with almost full-grown ducklings nursed the reed margins. All the reed warblers were singing from the tiny patches of reed by the lake. A few more mallards dozed on the island on the pool by the hide, a moorhen sitting on a nest in the dead tree on the island. A pair of herons had a couple of very tatty youngsters with them, chasing off a first-Summer bird that got too close.

Broad-leaved helleborine, Sale Water Park 

I walked down along the lakeside to the car park. More mute swans joined the mallards and Canada geese begging on the slipway on the far bank. I kept an eye out for the broad-leaved helleborine I'd spotted by the path this time last year and was rewarded by a tall flower spike just where I remembered it being.

The feeders by the café were monopolised by great tits, most of them juveniles. A blue tit snuck in when the great tits scattered as a noisy dog passed by but it was soon barged off when they returned.

The woodland walk 

I had a quick look at the woodland walk and quickly concluded that the aching knees weren't up to either walking down to Kenworthy Woods or walking up into Chorlton so I got the tram into Chorlton and got the bus home. I'm going to have to get some miles under these feet to get the knees working properly again, it only takes a few lazy days to get them stiffened up again.