Mersey Valley

Heron, Merseybank 

It was a glorious day, I didn't want to spoil it by stressing about travel or finding anything in particular so I opted for a slow drift up the Mersey Valley starting at Turn Moss and ending somewhere beyond Chorlton Water Park. In the event I walked into West Didsbury.

Hawthorn Lane 

Robins were singing, parakeets squeaked and shrieked, and squirrels chased each other about as I walked down Hawthorn Lane then cut across the clearing into Ivy Green. There were plenty of jackdaws and woodpigeons about and a couple of carrion crows practised for their Winter songs.

Chorlton Ees 

At first it looked like more of the same in Chorlton Ees save that the small tortoiseshells of the open paths of Ivy Green gave way to the speckled woods of the thicker woodland. A couple of great tits took exception to me and as I was watching them I noticed a couple of leaves high in a tree behind them fall upwards. My usual mistake when looking for the runners and riders in a mixed tit flock is to look too high, today I was looking too low: all the action was going on in the high canopy of the ash trees. More great tits, half a dozen blue tits, some long-tailed tits, at least three juvenile chiffchaffs, a couple of goldcrests… and a lot of unidentifiable shadows flitting behind leaves. And not a sound from any of they.

Where the action was

There was bank maintenance work going on at Jackson's Boat so that stretch of the river was dead quiet except for a lot of grass dust. It wasn't a great deal busier further along, a few mallards and a heron flew downriver, a few black-headed gulls drifted about, there was the usual traffic of woodpigeons overhead. The first brown hawker of the day patrolled the bankside. There wasn't much happening in the hedgerows. It's a lot early to expect redpolls or siskins in the larches by the golf course but I checked them out and got squeaked at by a chiffchaff.

By the Mersey

It was with a sense of reckless abandon that I plunged into Barlow Tip at the first opportunity and barged my way about along one of the wilder paths. Blackbirds and blue tits joined the robins and chiffchaffs in the trees, wrens sang deep in bramble patches, a pair of bullfinches whistled sadly in an elderberry bush. Every so often a Southern hawker would skim past the small trees. 

Barlow Tip 

I emerged onto the metalled path and decided to stick with it, some of the brambles and blackthorns had drawn blood. This path was busy with brown hawkers, a few territorial bouts resulting in mid-air collisions I could hear from yards away. A migrant hawker sped through in a dead straight line, this is one of the circumstances where it would be the hunted not the hunter.

Chorlton Water Park 

Unsurprisingly Chorlton Water Park was busy with people. It was also busy with tufted ducks and black-headed gulls, it looked a bit light on mute swans, Canada geese and mallards and nearly all the coots were down the other end of the lake.

Tufted ducks, Chorlton Water Park
Female tufties often show rounded heads and sometimes have a white blaze at the base of the bill, suggestive of scaup. A scaup's a much bigger bird and they generally give the impression that they lie lower in the water than tufties.

River Mersey by Kenworthy Woods 

I chose not to walk round the lake, I went back to the river and walked upstream. The bridge to Kenworthy Woods is still closed so I carried on along the river listening to the calls of buzzards, nuthatches, dunnocks and wrens and the songs of robins and chiffchaffs. Oddly there were no parakeets along this stretch.

Heron, Merseybank 

There was more bankside maintenance going on by Princess Parkway so it was a while beyond there before I started bumping into mallards dabbling on the river. A heron was sunbathing on the far bank of the river and not caring overmuch about the walkers and cyclists passing by. I almost didn't notice the female mandarin sitting among the rocks at a bend in the river.

Mandarin duck, Merseybank 

I decided to call it quits when I got to the steep path up the bank and onto Merseybank Park. It was a short walk to the bus stop for the 23 and thence the weekly shop in Urmston.