Mosses

River Glaze, Little Woolden Moss
Canada geese, teal and mallards on the river.

It was another gloomy but dry and relatively mild morning. I noticed that if I got a shift on I could get a train that wasn't cancelled in to Irlam for a walk over the mosses. At Irlam I got the 67 into Cadishead and then I crossed over into Glazebrook. As I passed over the bridge a pair of mallards dabbled upstream in the Glaze and a pair of mute swans browsed downstream.

Black-headed gulls and lapwings, Glazebrook 

Walking through Glazebrook the hedgerows were busy with titmice. On the approach to the motorway a couple of fields were heaving with a couple of hundred lapwings, a hundred or so black-headed gulls and fifty-odd starlings. On the other side of the road a couple of buzzards called to each other in the trees near Woolden Road. It was as I was trying to take a photo of one of them I discovered I'd left the camera card in my laptop at home. My, how I laughed.

Shaggy ink caps
Some were a foot tall.

I walked up to Little Woolden Moss. The Glaze here was busy with dozens of Canada geese, teal and mallards. The fields were quiet of birds but there were plenty passing overhead: a steady traffic of woodpigeons, black-headed gulls and starlings and a flock of a dozen stock doves.

Little Woolden Moss 

There were more black-headed gulls on the bits of the Western pools visible from the path. The walk down to the Eastern pools was very quiet indeed, just the odd robin or wren and a couple of long-tailed tits in the birch trees. There were clouds of non-biting midges but it was too gloomy for the last of the common darters to be about. At least one of the non-biting midges turned out to be an imposter.

Cross-leaved heath 

Cladonia 

Little Woolden Moss 

I shared tales of empty notebooks with a birder coming the other way. He'd decided to head over for a walk along the Glaze as he reckoned he'd worked out the spot favoured by the great white egret that's been seen around recently. I hope he got it. Within minutes of our parting I had had a kestrel, a snipe and an immature female peregrine pass overhead at treetop height. The number of times I've had a peregrine pass by that close can be counted on the fingers of my left foot, but no chance of a photo. A female reed bunting struck a series of picturesque poses in a birch tree by the path as though safe in the knowledge a camera wasn't going to be pointed her way.

Ten Greenland white-fronted geese had been reported on Mosslands Farm on the field just North of the reserve. Looking over that way I saw a group of birdwatchers pointing in the right direction so I assumed they were still around to be looked at. It's an odd thing: up to the late nineties every white-fronted goose I saw was a Greenland white-front, the past twenty years they've all been Russian (or European if you prefer). These days it's an event if a Greenland white-front appears East of North Wales so double figures is something special. As I walked round that way there was a lot of noise from the neighbouring field with the rattle of a couple of fieldfares and a kestrel mobbing a buzzard sat in a tree on the field margin.

Six of the geese were showing excellently at the far side of the field of Winter barley. I don't have any photos of Greenland white-fronted geese; the reader is left to imagine the colloquial Anglo-Saxon running through my head as I looked at them. For all that they key identification factor is the colour of the bill (orange for Greenland, pink for Russian), it was immediately obvious which they were even before I pointed my binoculars at them. Russian white-fronts are a very similar shade of brown to the other grey geese, Greenland white-fronts are an oily dark brown, darker even than juvenile pink-feet. The orange beaks confirmed the ID though mud and gloomy light dulled them down a lot.

Twelve Yards Road

I walked through Chat Moss into Irlam. A mixed tit flock at Four Lanes End included a dozen long-tailed tits, a few blue tits and great tits and a goldcrest. The field just to the North of Twelve Yards Road was busy with dozens of carrion crows, stock doves and starlings; a couple of woodpigeons and about fifty fieldfares flew overhead. The male kestrel was sitting on the telegraph pole by Four Lanes End, a couple of immature kestrels were hunting a little further down the road. I'm surprised they've not been chased off yet. There weren't many chaffinches about and no buntings of any sort. There weren't any meadow pipits about either and just the one skylark and a handful of linnets.

Cutnook Lane 

There was another mixed tit flock on Cutnook Lane, this one including a chiffchaff as well as a goldcrest. Down the bottom of the lane one of the fields has been put to grazing sheep and they were outnumbered by magpies, jackdaws and pied wagtails.

All sorts of unlikely flowers were still in bloom but my knees were saying it was November. It was still only early afternoon but I decided to call it quits once I got into Irlam and I headed home.

Bramble