A tad damp

Grey squirrels in the back garden

The schedule for the week was intended to begin with a visit to Martin Mere but a yellow weather warning yesterday put the blocks on that, it's a long walk in rain of biblical proportions. It was looking like Cumbria and North Wales were going to miss the worst of it until last night when the warnings were revised. Any slight temptation I may have had to brave the crowds at Bempton where the possible Eastern crowned leaf warbler had turned out to be a pale-legged leaf warbler were tempered by North Yorkshire copping for it worse than us. I decided to be sensible and let the weather pass.

It's looking like it's going to be a long, wet lonely Winter so I'll have to come up with a strategy that doesn't involve pneumonia and trench foot.

I've been reviewing my coverage of Greater Manchester this year. The Northeast of the region has been pretty neglected, largely because now my train into Manchester doesn't stop at Deansgate for the tram link it's a real pain getting across the city centre to Victoria. I hadn't realised just how much it had been neglected until I noticed the distribution of my records of robins. The shape is similar for blue tits, great tits, wrens and chaffinches.

Map of this year's robin records in Greater Manchester to date.

So part of the Autumn and Winter campaign will need to include visits to Daisy Nook, Alkrington Woods and Watergrove Reservoir and a few stops offs in Heywood, Middleton and North Manchester. I also need to catch up with a few sites in Bolton, Wigan and Salford. I won't catch up with everywhere by any means but I can map out a few rainy day bus journeys that can take in a few short walks round parks, canals and reservoirs.

I also need to catch up with Cheshire. I've missed the dragonfly season on the Northwich flashes but they and Marbury Country Park are always worthwhile in Autumn. As are Frodsham Marsh and Lapwing Hall Pool. I probably won't get to the Sandbach flashes. And I do need a visit to Parkgate this Winter.

I've not done the exploration of Yorkshire I'd been planning on doing though I've visited a few sites that were new to me. I think any further exploration will be on a whim rather than a plan.

So that leaves Anglesey, because I've not been for a couple of years and Holyhead and South Stack can be productive even outside the seabird city breeding season; seawatching on the North Wales coast and Redcar Beach; and the Lake District, which I keep neglecting.

Now then: how much of that can be done in the pouring rain? I think I've worked out why I've neglected so many of these in the course of a lousy Summer.

Cob Kiln Wood

Buzzard

I didn't want to not do anything with a fine Autumn day but I didn't want to trust much to public transport so I thought I'd bob over and have a wander round Irlam Moss just to get a bit of exercise and see what's about. So the train to Irlam was cancelled. I could wait two hours for the next one, I could give up or I could just drift somewhere, which is how I ended up at Cob Kiln Wood.

By Old Eeas Brook 

The wood was livening up for the Autumn with robins and woodpigeons singing and great tits calling at the Torbay Road entrance. Long-tailed tits bounced around in the willows by the bridge over Old Eeas Brook with a couple of blue tits. The brook was high after the recent rains and somebody had taken a strimmer to a long length of the bank. If they were intending to eradicate the Himalayan balsam they've left it twenty years too late. 

Cob Kiln Wood 

The path was muddy but negotiable and I passed blackbirds and wrens as they fossicked about in the dogwoods and elders. I stopped and tried to pick out the runners and riders in a mixed tit flock working its way through the willow scrub. The great tits and long-tailed tits made themselves known quite readily, the blue tits were quieter and it took me an age to find the treecreeper working its way up and down the birch saplings behind the willows.

The path through the clearing is lined with comfrey

Passing through into the electricity pylon clearing I was surprised to see large whites skittering about the balsams and speckled woods sunning themselves as best could in the grey light. Needless to say, the first sign of my camera and they were away. There was a steady traffic of woodpigeons and jackdaws overhead, a great spotted woodpecker flew across the clearing and a couple of ring-necked parakeets called from the trees by the fields beyond.

Buzzards

I could hear a buzzard calling but wasn't sure if it was just the one bird or two. As I got to the middle of the clearing the three buzzards slowly wheeled overhead. One was distinctly smaller than the other two, at first I thought it was just higher up but then it swapped places with one of the others and was still smaller. Presumably a small male with two well-built ladies. I negotiated the very muddy stretch of path to the exit and looked back to see if I could get all three of the birds into the frame for a photo without their just being small dots and found it was now four buzzards slowly wheeling high over towards Urmston.

Cob Kiln Wood 

The joints were aching and I didn't like the look of the clouds rolling in so I decided to mollycoddle myself and just wander down Cob Kiln Lane into Urmston. Woodpigeons and magpies clattered about, robins and chiffchaffs sang, a couple of chaffinches picked and a wren scolded me off its territory. I just reached the stables when it started raining, it was heavy by the time I got to Stretford Road so I called it quits, I'd only just dried off after Thursday.

Cob Kiln Lane 

Birdwatchers' code of conduct

There was a piece in the Guardian about the dangers of being over enthusiastic or downright obsessional about seeing or photographing plants and animals. It is an issue that crops of from time to time.

It's forty years since the last time I saw some idiot thrashing about in a bush trying to flush a rarity into the open but I still read and hear stories about misbehaviour and a couple of times a year I'll see someone and wonder what on earth they think they're doing. And I try hard not to be that person someone else is wondering about. Which is why there's often a lot of scenery and not a lot of bird in many of my photos and why there's sometimes all scenery and no bird. To my mind the welfare of the bird far outweighs the birdwatcher's desire to see it, let alone take a photo of it. 

This is also why I'm sometimes cagey about what I've seen and where, or when. And why I've not gone looking for some birds that would be new to my life list despite my having a good idea where they're nesting. Hopefully I'll see them by accident some time half a mile away, and if I don't, well there's no harm done is there? I live to hope another day and they can get on with their business unmolested.

The BTO's Birdwatcher's Code summarises the do's and don'ts (pdf format).

Bempton

Gannets

The East coast has been filled with wonders so I thought I'd use up one of my free return tickets on a trip out to Bempton. For the third night running I set my alarm clock, today I didn't switch it off, groan and say: "Conkers!" The Met Office promised a cool, dry lunchtime, a bracing Nor' nor' Easter and light rain in the afternoon.

I've been sniffy about Yorkshire's provision of wayside birds, today it was in a giving mood with an abundance of birdlife in the fields as we passed by. Mostly woodpigeons, carrion crows and jackdaws with odd flocks of rooks and black-headed gulls, here and there a couple of pheasants or a buzzard and every so often a roe deer would trot across a field of rough pasture. For once there were ducks on the small waterways — all mallards — but the Ouse and the Humber were, as usual, deserts. 

About halfway between Scorborough and Watton I noticed a mini-digger at work on a land drain by the line. It was accompanied by ten little egrets which seemed to have regarded it as a large and noisy animal of some kind providing a convenient supply of large lumps of food-filled mud.

The weather wasn't bad when I arrived at Bempton. The sun shone weakly through the clouds and it was quite mild despite the wind. Rooks and jackdaws made a racket in the trees by the road and moorhens fossicked round the village pond.

Walking to Bempton Cliffs 

I walked out of the village and up to Bempton Cliffs, checking out the hedgerows along the way and scanning through the flocks in the fields just in case. There were large flocks of woodpigeons, starlings and jackdaws, the pigeons and the handful of stock doves tended to be skittish, one field was thickly carpeted with black-headed gulls and herring gulls. Robins and wrens sang in the hedgerows, linnets and goldfinches skittered about and a mixed flock of house sparrows and tree sparrows had me confused for a couple of minutes.

Blackbird

The Dell

Arriving at Bempton Cliffs I had a look at The Dell, the densely wooded hollow just before the car park. There'd been wood warblers, an Arctic warbler and a possible Eastern crowned leaf warbler together with a couple of yellow-browed warblers yesterday. I'd settle for any of them. There were plenty of tree sparrows bouncing about, a few blackbirds were feeding in the hawthorns. I could hear a chaffinch but took a while to find it, the chiffchaff that was calling kept under cover. A red admiral basked in what little sun was available. I couldn't find any other warblers here so I had a nosy round the trees in the car park and had no more success there. I was told I was half an hour late for a Siberian chiffchaff.

Bempton Cliffs 

I decided to go for a walk by the cliffs while the weather was behaving itself then come back for a second look at The Dell. Weather permitting I could give it an hour's intensive staring at before I'd have to go for the train home.

Pigeons
Most are of the rock dove type but you can see a few domestic variations in there.

Gannets

The cliffs were heaving with gannets, pigeons and jackdaws. There were still some young gannets on nests. Most of them were exercising their wings ready for their first flight, there were a few nests still with fluffy black young. All the auks and kittiwakes had gone and I only saw the one fulmar. I did a bit of seawatching, the few birds that weren't gannets were herring gulls.

Gannets

Gannet

Gannet

Gannet
The problem was that if a gannet was likely to get close enough not to get reduced to soft focus in the mist it was also likely to stall, bank or otherwise jink out of the frame as the photo got taken. I have a lot of "There was a gannet there a moment ago" photos.

Gannet

Gannet

Gannets

Gannets

Gannet and full-grown chick

Gannets, including a chick lower right

It started raining as I walked back to the visitor centre for a call of nature. As I went in a chap told me there was a long-eared owl in The Dell. I did the necessary and headed over as quickly as possible.

Walking back to the visitor centre 

Bempton Cliffs 

It had started raining in earnest and the anticipated crowd of birdwatchers wasn't there. I scanned round without much hope of seeing the owl and was joined by a couple of other people. Tree sparrows and a great tit muttered from deep cover, woodpigeons sidled into the tree canopies. I heard the chiffchaff again and then heard the sad bullfinch-like call of a Siberian chiffchaff. I was trying to find that when I noticed an eye staring out of the depths of a hawthorn. Luckily the wind was thrashing all the foliage about so I also got to see the full face and half the body of a long-eared owl, a lifer for me. I tried to put the others onto it but the visibility was appalling and my binoculars were starting to steam up then I made the mistake of moving round to see if I could get a better view of the owl and lost it completely. In the end I had to admit defeat and wished them the best of luck.

I set off for the station and hadn't gone far before a kind soul pulled up his car and asked if I wanted a lift. I'm not too proud to say thank you very much and jump into the car before he changed his mind.

The gent dropped me off at the station in plenty of time for the train before the one I was aiming for. I considered getting off at Bridlington for a nosy round the harbour but common sense prevailed and I stayed on the train to Sheffield. 

The rain only slightly dampened the birdwatching. There was even a black-headed gull on the Humber. As the train passed Brough Haven we had a close encounter with a ringtail hen harrier that was hunting over a field by the trackside as a skein of greylags passed overhead. Passing over the Ouse near Goole the train spooked a flock of thirty-odd black-tailed godwits.

The train back to Manchester from Sheffield was twenty-two minutes late. Standing in the cold and driving rain I was astonished to see two red admirals flying into the wind along the track. Tough little buggers.

The rain abated once we got into Derbyshire and there were hints of sun in the Hope Valley. The sun must have set sometime as we arrived into Manchester but it was more of a fade into darker grey. Rather despite the weather it had been a good day's birdwatching and I got myself another lifer.

Bempton Cliffs 

Haigh Woodland Park

The reassuring crunch of beech nuts underfoot 

On the way home from Leighton Moss I decided to get off at Chorley and get the 632 to Wigan. There was still plenty of a damp afternoon left and I wanted to do a bit of reconnaissance on Yarrow Country Park, one of a couple of sites near Chorley I've had on my radar this year (the other being White Coppice). It turns out it's pretty easy to get to Yarrow Country Park from either Chorley or Wigan so I'll have to have an explore sometime.

As we were going into Wigan we passed the entrance to Haigh Woodland Park. As we passed through Standish it had become a sunny afternoon so I got off at the next stop and had a wander.

Millstone Grit

I went through the Plantation Gates and walked down to the bridge over the Douglas, passing some very nice bits of Millstone Grit as the lane went through some cuts. Robins sang, magpies and woodpigeons clattered about, squirrels scampered along the path and there was the reassuring crunch of beech nuts underfoot.

Yellow Brook 

The Douglas flowed through a thickly-vegetated valley and was fitfully visible from the bridge. I walked up the other side, reached Yellow Brook and decided to walk upstream rather than following the path crossing it (there were a lot less steps). 

In the event I ended up following the lane up to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Given the time of year and the time of day I wasn't surprised it was a quiet walk. More magpies, woodpigeons, robins and squirrels and some more woodpigeons, the occasional dunnock, great tit or blackbird, and a nuthatch sang from somewhere deep in the woods. Black-headed gulls flew overhead. A few mallards and moorhens fussed on the canal. A sleepy teatime woodland walk and none the worst for that.

Leeds and Liverpool Canal

Haigh Woodland Park 

I had a brief foray into the Higher Plantation where I added a great spotted woodpecker to the tally then followed the paths leading to Higher Lane where the surprise of the afternoon was that I was only five minutes' walk from Wigan Road and the 575 bus stop. Haigh Country Park looks further away on the map and seemed a long way out from Aspull that time the bus had to do a detour. The rules are different for pedestrians and motorists and for once they're in the pedestrians' favour.

Leighton Moss

Red deer

It looked like being a drier sort of day today so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and headed for Leighton Moss.

As the train passed the coastal hides the usual family party of mute swans on the pool near the Eric Morecambe Hide were accompanied by herons, little egrets and a great white egret.

Goldfinches and chaffinch (middle)

The Hideout was busy both with birds and people. The crowds of goldfinches included a lot of rather scruffy looking youngsters halfway into their moult into adult plumage. They jostled with chaffinches, robins, great tits and coal tits while a scrum of pheasants and mallards picked up the spillings.

Dabchick 

Shoveler

Pintail (centre) with coots, gadwall and shoveler

Lilian's Hide was busy but not uncomfortably so. Dozens of coots and shovelers drifted and fed by the near bank of the pool with a couple of dozen gadwalls and a handful of dabchicks. Hiding on plain sight amongst them was my first pintail of the Winter, a rather pretty duck. The usual family of swans cruised by the far bank with a few more coots. A couple of migrant hawkers patrolled the reeds in front of the hide.

Pintail 

The walk down to the reedbed hides was busy with birds but reasonably quiet of people. Jays made a racket in the trees, woodpigeons clattered about, nuthatches called and wrens and robins sang. A mixed tit flock — great tits, blue tits and a couple of chiffchaffs — quietly flitted about in the willow undergrowth. Water rails were heard but not seen. Ditto the four Cetti's warblers along the path.

Red deer

Three red deer were grazing on the pool at the Tim Jackson Hide, one on the bund nearest to us, one in the middle of the pool feeding on the grass on a little island and one lurking in the reeds. The mass of shovelers, gadwalls and teal just treated them as obstacles to swim round.

I think I can be forgiven for not spotting this red deer immediately 

Gadwalls 

There were a few more gadwall and teal at the Griesdale Hide but it was pretty quiet all told. A few migrant hawkers zipped around by the hide, a Southern hawker came and eyeballed me as I started down the path through the reedbeds.

Nuthatch 

Walking back I bumped into another mixed tit flock in the willows. Great tits, blue tits, a few long-tailed tits, a couple each of nuthatches, treecreepers and goldcrests and just the one marsh tit.

Kestrel

Just by the visitor centre I was making sure all the goldfinches in the alders by the path were goldfinches when they all took flight. A kestrel settled in the top of the alders for a minute or two before moving on. The moment it left the goldfinches were back. I noticed some dark shapes high in the sky above the trees, they turned out to be a dozen swallows hawking way on high.

As I waited for the train at Silverdale Station the latest candidate for last butterfly of the year was a red admiral feeding on the ivy flowering on the wall.

Robin

Strangers from a train

I mentioned the other day that I'd been thinking about the plumage features small birds use to keep track of their fellows in flight, like the roundels and similar emblems used by military aircraft. The idea is to try and use these features to identify the birds in the sort of fleeting glances you get from a moving vehicle. It's a miserable and wet sort of a day so I thought I'd explore the idea a bit more with some of the small birds likely to be seen in passing.

Before we do anything: a lot of the small birds you see from a moving vehicle will be unidentifiable whatever you do. With luck and experience you'll be able to shift the odds in your favour a bit but don't get stressed out about the ones that got away. If it was easy you wouldn't be playing the game.

I had intended illustrating this with "bad" photos of small birds from a distance, the sort of view you're likely to have, but that's proven easier said than done. It's a project in progress, I'll come back to it sometime. You'll have to do with my inartistic attempts at illustration.

House sparrows appear uniformly brown at a glance, the males darker than the females. You might catch the white wing bar, most times you won't. You'll usually pick up sparrows by their size, shape and that 90° jink as they fly into cover. Tree sparrows look more contrasty but more often than not the only way you'll know for sure is if the light catches the bright chestnut cap.

Goldfinch

With fair light and luck goldfinches are very easy to identify, that thick yellow band on a blackish background is diagnostic.

Greenfinch

Greenfinches are chunky and very often look uniformly grey at a glance. Those bright yellow flashes to the wings and tail are the clue to the ID.

Chaffinch

That big white flash on the upperwing says chaffinch. The white tail margins make it appear long.

Linnet

Linnets and meadow pipits should be dead easy to tell apart, right? From a moving vehicle they both tend to be blink and you've missed it and a lot of your passing mysteries will be one or other. The white panel in the flight feathers of the linnet is diagnostic if you can see it. 

Meadow pipit

Mipits tend to look dark and spindle shaped and the white tail margins can jump out at you. 

Twite

Twites are very hard work at any distance, close to any identification is likely to be by what you don't see.

Siskin

Siskins and redpolls add an extra layer of difficulty by not often being out in the open. You'll be lucky to see the combination of goldfinch-like primrose yellow wing bar and greenfinch-like yellow tail flash of a siskin. If you identify a redpoll at all from a glance it'll be because of the short, blue tit-like shape.

Most buntings look long in flight, the white tail margins exaggerating the length. 

Male reed bunting

The black on the head of a male reed bunting is often the first thing you register. A male yellowhammer is obvious, telling a female yellowhammer from a female reed bunting on a passing glance is usually dependent on its being in the company of a male. 

Corn bunting

A corn buntings are bigger and heavier looking than a greenfinch and at a glance look featureless. Skylarks are a similar size and can look chunky but they're all sharp corners. You won't have time to see if the bunting's legs dangle in flight like the textbooks say and more often than not they'll be tucked away like any other small bird.

Bullfinch

Last but not least, the combination of inky blue black tail and wings and white rump shout out bullfinch every time.