Mersey Valley

Shovelers and teal (right), Broad Ees Dole 

I didn't feel like subjecting myself to Saturday buses so I wandered down to Urmston Lane and got the bus to the Stretford Metrolink Station and walked down to the cemetery. It was a mild, grey sort of a day and very damp underfoot. I thought I'd wander down to Sale Water Park then see where the light, my knee and my energy levels took me.

The cemetery had its usual assortment of robins, magpies and pigeons but no thrushes of any kind, not even a blackbird.

Hawthorn Lane 

I walked down Hawthorn Lane which was relatively quiet. A couple of blue tits bounced about in the trees, a song thrush flew up from the leaf litter and came over to make sure I wasn't anything to be scared of, decided I wasn't but stayed in it's tree until I'd walked past; and a bullfinch wheezed melancholically as it nibbled hawthorn buds.

Blue tit, Stretford Ees

I climbed up onto the bank and walked along the river beside Stretford Ees.. Ring-necked parakeets called in the trees, their calling would be a constant feature of the afternoon. Woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows flew overhead with no general pattern of direction. I was looking at the pool, wondering where the moorhens were, when I noticed a gang of blue tits and great tits having a bath in a corner underneath a bramble patch.

The river was fairly low but running fast, a fair reflection of a couple of wet nights after a dry fortnight. There wasn't a bird on there, which is unusual: if there's not one or other wagtail there's generally a pair of mallards lurking by the bank on this stretch. 

Black-headed gulls and great crested grebe, Sale Water Park 

A few dozen black-headed gulls had already arrived to roost on the lake at Sale Water Park. There was the full complement of the usual gull species with them: one common gull, one lesser black-back, and one first-Winter herring gull. Those three sat on buoys away from the crowd. Unlike a great crested grebe which sat in the middle while it had a preen.

Shoveler and teal, Broad Ees Dole 

There were a dozen teal on the teal pond on Broad Ees Dole, appropriately enough. Most of them were drakes in pristine breeding plumage cruising the reedbed margins like a repertory company production of "West Side Story." A couple of pairs of mallards dabbled about and a couple of pairs of shovelers cruised midwater. Neither of the drake shovelers had lost much of their eclipse plumage yet.

The pool by the hide was high and remarkably empty, just two moorhens rummaging about in the water weeds.

Broad Ees Dole 

Sale Water Park 

I walked round the lake, the usual mob of mute swans and Canada geese mugging for scraps over by the water sports centre. The hedgerows on this side were busy with mixed tit flocks, their furtive passage through the depths of the hawthorns and elder bushes given away by the contact calls of long-tailed tits.

Barrow Brook

Blackbirds, wrens and robins rummaged about in the undergrowth along Barrow Brook while woodpigeons clattered about in the trees. There was a crescendo of parakeet calls as about fifty of them gathered in the pre-roost in the trees by Jackson Boat car park.

The sun had just set and the light was dimming. I decided I didn't have the legs to carry on the walk down the river to Kenworthy Woods so I crossed over and walked through Hardy Farm into Chorlton for the bus home. The hundred and fifty or so jackdaws in the roost at the bottom of Hardy Lane was out-shouted by about a hundred and twenty parakeets.

Hardy Farm