Wellacre Country Park

Woodpigeon, Jack Lane 

I had a wander down to Wellacre Country Park, getting the 256 to Town's Gate and walking down into a very quiet Wellacre Wood. The mid-July doldrums are a couple of weeks late this year, probably because a lot of birds were having another go at nesting after a disastrous June. It was cloudy and heavy but a stiff breeze brought a freshness to the air when it could. A woodpigeon sang, a magpie rattled, a great tit muttered its disapproval and many speckled woods danced and chased about the trees. A brown hawker zipped past as I emerged from the trees onto the path.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Country Park 

Leaving the woods and walking past the fields there was a steady traffic of woodpigeons and lesser black-backs. A flock of six stock doves debated joining the carrion crows in the field where the hay was being baled but decided to head for the stables. Over by Irlam Road a hundred or so starlings perched on the pylons and a few sand martins joined the black-headed gulls and pigeons whirling round the locks.

Jack Lane 

Jack Lane was busier than the woods, in so far as two chiffchaffs squeaked in the trees and deep in the reeds baby moorhens wheezed in reply to the chastisement of their parents. A reed warbler warned me off as I stopped near its nest site to watch a Southern hawker patrolling the reed margins.

Heading for Dutton's Pond 

Walking down to Dutton's Pond I became aware that there was a mixed tit flock in the willows on the railway embankment. I don't know how to explain the feeling one gets when you know one's there even before you've heard any noise you can put a name to. I suspect I unconsciously notice "leaves" moving the wrong way out of the corner of my eye. I could hear a chiffchaff squeaking, I eventually saw a pair of blue tits and a great tit flew out and into the willows behind me. I couldn't see the long-tailed tits which is unusual because they're generally the only small birds coming out in the open this time of year.

Dutton's Pond 

A couple of moorhens mooched about on Dutton's Pond while chiffchaffs squeaked in the trees. I decided against a stroll over Green Hill so I walked down the path to Ambleside Road, passing a family of Canada geese loafing by the pond side along the way.

Canada geese, Dutton's Pond 

I got the train home and discovered I'd missed a drama. There were feathers all over the front door step and the remains of a woodpigeon in one of the plant pots. The head being eaten suggested it was a sparrowhawk kill though the rest of the carcass had been cleanly butchered. I went inside and told the cat what she'd missed.