Mersey Valley

Cob Kiln Lane 

Another warm, though very cloudy, day proved to be typically Julyish. To say the small birds of Cob Kiln Wood were keeping a low profile would be to understate. A blackbird sang, a chiffchaff squeaked, there were the furtive chirrups and twitters of house sparrows and goldfinches. A juvenile robin's call to its parents from deep in some hawthorn bushes was answered by a very curt reply from further down the hedgerow. It came as a relief to pass a field of horses and see woodpigeons, magpies and stock doves.

Cob Kiln Wood 

The woodland had been lively with speckled woods so it came as a surprise to find not many butterflies in the pylon clearing. For a while I had to make do with just the one red admiral that was flitting about the brambles. Which was better doing than the birdwatching. Eventually things picked up: a couple of lesser black-backs flew over, as did a few woodpigeons, if I looked hard enough I could just see a few swifts flying very high overhead, and half a dozen gatekeepers fluttered about in the nettles at the far end of the clearing.

Cob Kiln Wood 

Even the pigeons were missing from the bridge over the Mersey. I stood at the middle of the bridge and watched the banded demoiselles fluttering about the banksides for a minute or two before I crossed onto Banky Lane.

Banky Meadow 

A wren added to the afternoon tally by telling me to move along son and a moorhen called briefly from somewhere in the muddy willows. Even the speckled woods were getting few and far between. I'd gone a way down the path before I started hearing a buzzard in the trees. And a bit further before I heard the answering call. Eventually I found the first bird, an indistinct dark shape about halfway up a sycamore tree and keeping well into leaf cover. I was having as much luck with buzzards as owls this week. I've pretty much given up on the Merlin app again but I thought I'd try and restore my faith in it by having it confirm that the big noisy shape in the trees loudly calling to its parents was a buzzard. Merlin offered no suggestions although I thought of one or two. Good job we have enough buzzards round here to get to know what they sound like.

Banky Meadow 

I completed the circuit and headed off to Ashton on Mersey for the bus having added the ring-necked parakeet chunnering to itself high in an oak tree to the tally and having been closely eyeballed by a common darter in the car park. It's sort of nice to have things get back to normal for a bit.