Play stopped play

Mallards, Canada goose and lesser black-back, Salford Quays

The overnight rain had been torrential but the promised thunderstorm didn't materialise. By dawn it had abated to the merely moderate and it had pretty much dried out by eight o'clock, the warmth, humidity and low cloud conspiring to make the day feel like a teenage armpit. I was torn between going out for a walk and listening to the cricket. If I stayed and listened to the cricket it would rain at Lords and everyone would blame me. On the other hand it's not nice weather to walk in. I decided to read a book, listen to the cricket and go for a walk when the stumps were pulled or rain stopped play.

The spadgers were out in force in the back garden, perhaps the rain had bashed the aphids and caterpiggles off the sycamores. The youngsters are well grown-up now, it's only the relative plainness of their plumage and the hint of yellow at the gape that makes them easily recognisable. 

The young great tits were fixtures in yesterday's rain, scarcely budging from the bottlebrush bush except to grab a sunflower from the feeder once every so often. Today they've hardly been around, which gave the blue tits and goldfinches more opportunities for slipping in to the feeders whenever the spadgers went for a bath. One of the adult blue tits is looking spruce in freshly-moulted plumage, his mate still has a crew cut and a mostly grey face. Their youngsters are keeping to the trees at the moment. I've not seen any young goldfinches locally yet even though they've been plentiful along the Mersey Valley.

The dunnocks have been very conspicuous today. The adults are looking very tidy in their new feathers and this seems to have stirred the male's loins, as if any male dunnock needs an excuse for fruitiness.

The blackcap's been quiet all day, unlike the wren and the blackbird. I'm counting the days for the robin to resume singing, it feels like a long time since he was a regular.

Lesser black-backs, Salford Quays

Stumps were called and I bobbed over to Salford Quays for a look at the gull roost. This time of year it's a small affair and relatively easy to unpick as most of the birds are either adults or birds that look adult until they open their wings and you see there's still a few patches of brown in the plumage. There were a few black-headed gulls, mostly perching noisily on railings. The large gulls were mostly lesser black-backs with a handful of herring gulls. There were a few younger gulls near Clipper Quay and Gnome Island. We've not had much of a Summer but the brown tones were still bleached out so a lesser black-back was very high contrast, sooty brown and white, and a herring gull looked like a badly overexposed sepia print, at first it looked like it had a white head but on closer inspection it was heavily streaked pale beige.

Herring gull, Salford Quays

Another young gull was more perplexing. It was obviously older, it had a white head with little streaking, and didn't quite look like a herring gull but I couldn't pin down why. It was chunky, but some herring gulls are chunky. The wings looked a bit longer than I'd expect, almost lesser black-back long, but there's a fair bit of variation amongst herring gulls and the angle you're seeing can be misleading. And there was a hefty beak with a deep keel to the lower mandible and a formidable hook at the end. Had that beak been entirely dark I'd have spotted it as a yellow-legged gull immediately. As it was the tip was horn-coloured and that had me foxed. It was only when it took flight and showed me a nice, clean black band on a white tail that I identified it as a yellow-legged gull, probably a second-calendar-year bird given how little streaking there was on the head. At this age all large gulls have legs the colour of rain-washed earthworms.

A couple of herds of mute swans cruised the canal, the Canada geese and mallards were settling down for the night, moorhens fossicked about in the rubbish caught by the quaysides.

Wharfside, looking over to Salford Quays 

I walked back to Trafford Wharf Road and waited for the X50 bus to the Trafford Centre, a chiffchaff singing from the bushes across the road and a goldfinch singing in the trees by the stop.

The connections at the Trafford Centre are iffy in the evening so I got the 250 and walked home through the park. About a hundred black-headed gulls loafed on the vacant lot that used to be Event City and fifty-one of them danced for worms on Barton Clough playing field. The couple of dozen on the playing field across the road at home was almost a let-down but they built up numbers by twilight.