Chat Moss

Pigeons

It was a cool and cloudy sort of day with a brisk wind with a hint of Autumn in it. I'm noticing the countdown to the end of Summer as much by the things I'm not seeing any more as anything else. There are still plenty of young birds about, it's evident that the cold, wet June put back a lot of nesting one way or another. But we seem to have had it with the swifts for one year, and I'm not sure that more have left than had arrived.

Whenever I'm walking up Cutnook Lane into Chat Moss I keep wondering what the walk up Raspberry Lane is like so today I thought I'd try it and see. I wasn't expecting to see much more than a few woodpigeons and carrion crows about anyway in this weather so I wouldn't be losing anything by the diversion.

Walking up Cutnook Lane there were plenty of woodpigeons and magpies about. Family groups of carrion crows with surprisingly young juveniles fussed about in corners of fields. A big flock of pigeons moving as one over a field of turf caused me to look twice at every subsequent passing pair of stock doves that flew by.

Raspberry Lane 

I turned onto Raspberry Lane and headed East with the wind at my back. More woodpigeons, stock doves, carrion crows and magpies and a couple of flocks of about a dozen starlings each. Starlings have been in short supply lately for some reason. Perhaps it's been as bad a year for cranefly larvae as it has been for butterflies. A buzzard made a racket as it flew along Twelve Yards Road and settled into a tree. 

Chat Moss 

Chat Moss — the clouds were quite fun

It was only mid-afternoon but the gloomy weather seemed to be kidding what birds there were into going to roost. Even the usual overhead passage of lesser black-backs was well into swing. The small birds were few and far between: a couple of great tits churring in a hawthorn bush and a wren churring from a field of rough between the lane and the motorway. A couple of swifts flew low overhead just to remind me not to get too cocky about deciding on "last seen" dates. A lone swallow made a fleeting pass over the margins of a field of corn.

Fiddler's Lane 

I carried on to the end of the lane where it meets Fiddler's Lane at the motorway bridge. I weighed up the pros and cons of walking up Fiddler's Lane to Twelve Yards Road and either heading West to Cutnook Lane and beyond or East into Barton Moss. It had been a pretty uninspiring walk as far as the birdwatching was concerned and I wasn't enthused by either option. I decided to walk over the motorway and into Irlam by Fiddler's Lane, just to see what it was like. I don't think I'll bother again, the walks onto the moss via Cutnook Lane and Astley Road are more interesting.

Having said that, there's a lot of scope for using Raspberry Lane as an extension of a walk around Chat Moss so I'm not walking the entire length of Cutnook Lane on both legs of the journey. The fields are farmed differently to those on the other side of the moss so there's scope for this stretch adding a bit more diversity in the birds and butterflies on a sunny day walk.