Wellacre Country Park

Comma, Wellacre Wood 

I wasn't for wasting what might be the last mild, sunny day before what the newspapers are promising might be fifteen feet of snow but will really be a week of grey and damp in the mid-fifties so I got the 256 into Flixton for a walk round Wellacre Country Park.

Wellacre Wood 

As I walked in from the bus stop by Delamere School the rooks, jackdaws and ring-necked parakeets in the trees were making a racket and blackbirds rummaged about in the undergrowth. The moment I stepped into Wellacre Wood it went dead quiet. It was fairly windy so the creaks and groans of the trees echoed those of my knees and further emphasised the quiet of the birds. I didn't see a one and it was only as I got to the edge of the wood I started to hear the carrion crows and magpies in the fields beyond. A comma butterfly sunning itself in the sunshine at the edge of the wood was a welcome bit of non-leaf movement.

It wasn't terribly busy out in the fields either. A handful of magpies bounced about, a couple of carrion crows fed in a field of cattle and a few woodpigeons flew overhead. It came as a relief to hear a robin singing in the hedgerow.

The long-tailed tits at Jack Lane weren't for having their photos taken.

At first it felt like it was going to be the same in Jack Lane. A couple of magpies cackled in the trees and a moorhen muttered in the reeds as I passed. I was most the way through the path through the reeds when the appearance of a dozen long-tailed tits heralded a mixed tit flock. The long-tailed tits were noisy and conspicuous as they barrelled along through the willows like monkeys. The great tits, blue tits and chiffchaffs were very hard work indeed. They were a lot easier (but not actually easy) to pick up when I bumped into the same flock by the railway embankment a little later, despite the distraction of the blood-curdling cries of a water rail in the reeds on the other side of the path.

By Jack Lane 

There was a smaller mixed tit flock at Dutton's Pond where the mallards were keeping well away from the squabblings of the moorhens. 

Green Hill 

I walked down past Green Hill to Flixton Road, the blue tits and great tits in the hedgerow not really making up any sort of flock. The only birds on the river were three woodpigeons getting a drink.

October's a funny month, very famine-or-feast. Still, if it were predictable it would be boring.