Little Woolden Moss

Female ruddy darter

I'd been and gone and got my monthly travel card and seeing as the next train out of Oxford Road was the Liverpool stopping train I got on that and sort of decided on a short walk on the Salford mosses. I wasn't up for a long walk having somehow managed to tweak an Achilles tendon in my sleep the other night so I'm walking at not much more than half speed. I appear to have achieved that combination of old age and male pattern hypochondria that means I can injure myself by looking at an eggcup. Anyway, I wasn't up for a long walk. So I got off at Glazebrook and headed for Little Woolden Moss.

Wood pigeon, Glazebrook 

It was a bright, cloudy afternoon and any threat of getting too warm was negated by a very brisk wind. The birds were quiet, even the collared doves in Glazebrook were being shy. The fields beyond the village were heaving with woodpigeons. Some of the barley had been cut and scores of them rummaged about in the stubble with family parties of crows. A couple of stock doves flew by, there were probably more in the fields.

Glazebrook Lane 

As I passed the junction with Woolden Road a dozen or so house sparrows fussed about in the hedgerow and a few swallows skimmed over the rooftops.

Linnets 

Crossing the motorway I took the path leading over the Glaze and on to Little Woolden Moss. Fifty or more linnets split their time between a field of barley stubble and the telegraph lines stretching over it. I noticed two juveniles still young enough to be being fed by their parents. At one point a couple of corn buntings flew up and perched on the lines, one of them vocally objecting to my dawdling about. Swallows skimmed the fields by Little Woolden Hall and a handful of house martins flew in and joined the ones flying at waist height by the path near the stables. I'd been hearing a buzzard for a while and it finally made an appearance soaring low over the trees of Great Woolden Wood.

River Glaze by Little Woolden Hall 

Another birder drove up. "Very quiet," he said, "But the hobby's about." Not just me finding the mid-July doldrums are a couple of weeks late this year. I walked down to the nature reserve seeing more woodpigeons and swallows and watching the lesser black-backs pass overhead.

Hornet-mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria)
One of the very few hoverflies I can identify at all.

The walk by the nature reserve was quiet of birds — for the first five hundred yards if it hadn't been for a chiffchaff squeaking in the trees there would have been nothing — but busy with insects despite the breeze. A few meadow browns flitted about deep in the grass by the path. A rather small "meadow brown" broke cover and fluttered weakly along the path, pausing to hug the ground every so often when the wind got too gusty. It took a while to see enough of it to be able to confirm my suspicions it was a large heath. Good to see the reintroduction scheme's working despite the lousy June weather. Back in the day before it became extinct locally the large heath was known as the Manchester argus.

Little Woolden Moss 

Dragonfly numbers were low at first. I was seeing one or two common darters and my first ruddy darter of the year. As the path got deeper into the shelter of birch scrub there were more darters skittering about in the heather, a couple of Southern hawkers patrolled the birch scrub and a common hawker methodically worked a patch of birch saplings by the path. A male kestrel hovering high up in the air floated down to treetop height before drifting over to the fields.

Hobby

I was approaching where the hide used to be when a jay's alarm calls made me look up. A hobby flew in from the fields behind the birches and slowly glided over the reserve with barely a wing beat.

Little Woolden Moss 

The Eastern pools were very quiet, even the usual lapwings and Canada geese were missing. A couple of mallards dabbled, a handful of juvenile pied wagtails mudlarked, a couple of linnets twittered in the cotton grass and a willow warbler deep in some bracken told me to keep moving along. I'd just got to the junction with the path to Astley Road when the usual marsh harrier drifted low over the opposite side of the moss and off towards the river.

Male ruddy dartter

I decided to head into Glazebury for a change, and in the hopes that there might be some yellow wagtails about in the fields. The heather along the path was busy with ruddy darters. As I turned onto the Northern margin of the reserve the path margins the ruddy darters gave way to a profusion of black darters, none of them stopping more than an instant before immediately zipping off again and nearly all of them hugging the tops of the low vegetation. A female kestrel flew in and hovered over this section of the reserve before swooping down and carrying off an unlucky field vole.

Mosslands Farm 

There were plenty of woodpigeons on the barley fields of Mosslands Farm but I couldn't see or hear any larks or wagtails. The field opposite the farmhouse had been recently ploughed and the carrion crows, starlings and pied wagtails rummaging about on there were joined by a couple of woodpigeons and the only lapwing of the day. I couldn't see any yellow wagtails but seeing as I didn't see the hare that got up and lolloped over to the field margins I made myself look three times.

By Moss Road 

The walk down Moss Road to Glazebury was pretty quiet. Small tortoiseshells fluttered by the path margins, blackbirds and collared doves fossicked about on the road, great tits, house sparrows and chaffinches were only contact calls in the trees. The scenery was beautiful. 

By Moss Road 

By Moss Road 

I started to notice that I'd been walking slowly when I started checking the buses. When I decided not to head into Irlam I was forty minutes away from the Warrington bus leaving in forty-three minutes time at Fowley Common Lane and decided to aim for the one due twenty-five minutes later. I got to the bridge over the Glaze just when that was due to depart in five minutes. I'd spent a lot of time looking for birds that weren't there but it was slow progress all the same.

River Glaze

I decided not to rush for it and just miss it and deliberately dawdled round the water treatment works hoping to hear or see more than the great tits and dunnocks in the hedgerows before going to wait ten minutes for the next bus. Being sensible for once as although the tendon was pulling a bit it wasn't hurting and it would be a good idea not to aggravate it. And it worked out in my favour because I got off the bus at Warrington Central and only had to wait twenty minutes for the direct train home. Nice when it works that way.