Irlam Moss

Pheasant

I was feeling tired and achy and headachy, the full male pattern hypochondria due to a combination of heavy, muggy weather, a high pollen count and a mad dash of a botched weekly shop in the five minutes allowed by our lousy train service. I still felt that I needed some exercise, if only to get some fresh air, reset the senses and try and walk some movement back in the joints so I got the next train to Irlam and had an hour or so's dawdle on Irlam Moss, walking up Astley Road, back down Roscoe Road then back to the station for the train home.

Irlam Moss by Astley Road 

It was desperately quiet. If not for the occasional squeak of a chiffchaff or the creak of farm machinery as fields were being turned over it would have been eerily silent. The only noise from the hundreds of woodpigeons feeding in the barley stubble was the occasional rattle of wings. Blackbirds and robins rummaged about in the hedgerows, goldfinches foraged in trees or flew overhead, families of carrion crows fossicked about in field margins, a constant stream of lesser black-backs passed overhead, all in dead silence. A passing black-headed gull broke the silence and I was ever so grateful. A couple of swallows couldn't be bothered twittering as they passed.

I was just approaching Prospect Grange when a buzzard flew low over the fields, scattering a flock of starlings and being ignored by the woodpigeons and stock doves on the ground.

Irlam Moss by Roscoe Road 

I turned onto Roscoe Road and scanned the fields. Lots more woodpigeons and carrion crows and a handsome "Old English" type cock pheasant. The "mouse" rummaging about in the roadside nettles turned out to be a robin. A yellowhammer called from the depths of the bracken in the land drain as I passed but I could not see a feather of it. Unlike the spadgers ten minutes down the road.

House sparrows

As I walked into Irlam the wind started blowing for rain and my headache eased a bit. The rain never actually arrived but the fresher air felt good and I felt the better even for this short walk. There was a point walking down Roscoe Road where I'd wondered if I'd gone deaf. The birthday party at Irlam Station as I waited for the train confirmed I hadn't.

Astley Road