Pennington Flash

Egyptian goose

Rather to my surprise I got my visit to Pennington Flash though it wasn't straightforward. The 25 arrived on time but we spent ten minutes at the roadworks in Davyhulme and got to the Trafford Centre just in time to wave bye bye to the 132. I checked to see if there were any alternatives to waiting half an hour for the 126, thinking I might be able to get the 22 into Eccles or Monton and pick up the 35 to Leigh. Yep, no problem, get off on one of the stops on Half Edge Lane and wait six or seven minutes for the 35. Luckily Half Edge Lane isn't wide enough for buses to overtake easily so I just managed to flag down the 35 riding on our tail.

And so I got to Pennington Flash.

It had rained a couple of times on the way in and I was glad I'd brought my raincoat. The rest of the afternoon was sunny and very breezy which made me wonder if I shouldn't have taken the risk and left the raincoat at home and worn a jacket. It would have poured down then, mind. I walked in from St Helens Road and decided to take the paths to the sailing club to see what was about in the light woodland by the flash. At first it wasn't a lot despite my bumping into a juvenile blackcap by the old car park. Even the chiffchaffs weren't squeaking.

Pennington Flash 

Pennington Flash 

The water was choppy on the flash, making it tricky to be sure of what you were looking at in the distance before it disappeared behind a wave. Rafts of dozens of coots were scattered around the flash, mostly close to the banks. Great crested grebes were peppered about, with a dozen of them congregating over by Ramsdales. Most of the cormorants were over on the spit drying their wings. There were a few out in midwater and three of them appeared to be fishing cooperatively, diving and rising in synchronisation. The raft of forty-odd large gulls out in the middle were 50:50 herring gulls to lesser black-backs. There might have been a couple of dozen black-headed gulls out there, mostly over by the car park.

Pennington Flash 

On a whim I followed the scrappy path through the woodland that eventually gets you onto Green Lane. It's one of those paths used by kids and dogs. And willow tits, as I learned when my passing  a dense stand of elderberries provoked a lot of angry buzzing from the undergrowth. This eased the floodgates a little and along the way I bumped into a family of great tits, a few chiffchaffs, a nuthatch and a willow warbler, a bumper bounty on the past week's performance. Common blue damselflies zipped about on the path, Southern hawkers patrolled the tree margins, common darters chased each other over the brambles and a migrant hawker passed by just long enough for me to see what it was.

Winter Hill from Pennington Flash 

At the sailing club a young lesser black-back was loudly begging for food on the jetty while what I presume was a parent looked on disdainfully from a lamp standard. The youngster was old enough to be flying strongly, I guess it's also considered to be old enough to feed itself. A lot of movement on the slipway turned out to be a family of pied wagtails, the youngsters — as ever — at least as intent on chasing each other as actually finding anything to eat.

Egyptian goose

I walked back and round to the car park where the mallards and mute swans were assiduously mugging for scraps. One young girl finished throwing bread at ducks and decided she was going to kick one of the swans. I rather hoped it would savage her — they can break your wing with one blow of their nose you know — but the mute swans here are remarkably tolerant of unruly children and dogs. Unlike the Canada geese but they were otherwise engaged cruising up and down the lake like an Atlantic convoy. Seven Egyptian geese are still being reported here but I could only find five.

Lapwings

There were about a hundred lapwings on the spit by the Horrocks Hide though half of the crowd weren't for settling and kept flying off and coming back again five minutes later for no apparent reason.

At the Tom Edmondson Hide 

Dabchick

Cormorant

For once there were more gadwalls on the pool opposite the Tom Edmondson Hide than at it. Most of them were juveniles and needed a careful look to separate them from the three-quarter-sized mallards in the reeds. A cormorant sat and dried its wings in front of the hide while gadwalls and dabchicks drifted about apparently aimlessly. A couple of brown hawkers dashed about the hawthorns and elderberries in the hedgerows.

At Ramsdales Hide

The reeds at Ramsdales made for difficult viewing of the islands. The wind helped a bit, blowing the reeds apart every so often to give clear views of parts of the scene but the overall effect was of a fan dancer being especially coy. I saw a teal and a dozen lapwings and there was a crowd of great crested grebes in the mouth of the bight.

Firs Park

I walked down to the canal, crossed the bridge and walked into Plank Lane for the 588 bus into Leigh. I just missed it so I walked down to Firs Park to see what was on the pond before going back to get the 584. There were plenty of woodpigeons about but only the one coot was out on the water and a lone swift hawked low over the treetops.

It had been fine, if cool and breezy, for the entirety of the walk. It poured down all the way home.