Pennington Flash

Egyptian geese 

After getting home exhausted and having an extremely ropey night's sleep with the after-effects of the high pollen count I wasn't in the market for anything energetic today. I spend most of the year forgetting that the allergic reactions aren't just sneezing fits, a runny nose and itchy eyes and ears then get a shock when I run into the hay fever season. The best way to describe it is like being a puppet with the strings cut. Anyway, I wasn't up for much. The dawn chorus these days is just "my" blackbird — the one at the station doesn't start replying til quite late on. It's past six before the first of the woodpigeons takes to song and later yet before the collared dove can be bothered.

I'd looked for Egyptian geese at Pennington Flash last week and had no luck so seven flew in over the weekend. I thought I'd best bob over and add them to the year list before they did a flit. 

I got the 126 over to Leigh and the 610 to the St Helens Road entrance to Pennington Flash. I was worried that I'd timed my arrival badly as four police cars and a police van pulled up at the entrance but the occupants all went the opposite way to me so that was alright then.

Hedgehog
I've no idea what the white thing in its ear is, I didn't get close enough to find out because I didn't want to stress it.

It was a lot quieter this week than last. A garden warbler singing at the entrance was unexpected, the blackcaps, blackbirds and chiffchaffs seemed to be singing at quarter strength. A young hedgehog was snuffling along the grass verge, I hope the dogs on walkies leave it alone.

Egyptian geese 

I got to the car park and the first thing I saw was seven Egyptian geese grazing by the picnic bench. I'm not good with Egyptian geese, three looked to have juvenile feathering on their wings and shoulders, I wasn't sure of a fourth and was only really sure that two were adults.

Egyptian geese 

Egyptian geese 

Coots

The coots, mute swans, mallards and Canada geese were pretty much as last week. The great crested grebes were harder to find, there were marginally more herring gulls and fewer black-headed gulls and I couldn't find any tufted ducks, terns or the common scoter. A few sand martins and swifts hawked low over the water. I kept scanning the dark shapes scything over the water just in case one might be a black tern, one of the missing items on the year list. They were all swifts. Still, don't look don't see.

Juvenile black-headed gull

Horrocks spit

There were no waders whatever on the spit at the Horrocks Hide which is unusual. The middle of the spit was awash with flowers so who knows what was hiding there. I did notice there were a couple of great crested grebes on nests out on the bight.

Horrocks spit

No reed buntings were singing and the reed warbler only piped up when it noticed I was having a nosy at its reedbed. The usual Cetti's warbler called but didn't sing again.

The reed warblers' pool 

There was a confusion of mallards and gadwalls on the Tom Edmondson Hide with all the drakes in eclipse and a lot of not quite full grown mallard ducklings mingling with the gadwalls. You can't even rely on telling them apart easily by the speculums on their wings (the coloured patches on their secondary feathers — blue with white borders in mallards, white and chestnut in gadwalls) as some of the birds had moulted them and hadn't grown replacements yet. Luckily if you get a big enough group like this the difference in the structure of the beaks becomes noticeable. It's a subtle difference that's not obvious if you see one or two on their own.

The wind was blowing the reeds about at Ramsdales which gave me fleeting views of a teal and a nesting moorhen amongst the mallards. And no waders.

Leeds and Liverpool Canal 

I didn't have the energy for the traipse back to St Helens Road so I walked up to the canal, crossed over and walked into Plank Lane for the 584 back to Leigh. The 126 got back to the Trafford Centre just in time for me to miss the 25 home so I got the 250 and walked home through an eerily silent park. Even the magpies were silent.

Barton Clough