Wellacre Country Park

Stock doves and woodpigeons 

Yesterday's plan was to go for a woodland walk but that was abandoned after I had an industrial injury involving the cat (well, I bent down to pick up her food bowl and the back went 'twang,' apparently I've reached that age where if you look at a photo of a heavy weight you pull a muscle). An attempt to walk off the soreness got as far as the bus stop. An evening with an hot water bottle on my back and a surprisingly good night's sleep seemed to do the trick, save a little stiffness, but I was loth to take my chances with the Saturday train lottery so kept things local.

Saturday started with the lesser black-backs passing over at first light and the carrion crow providing the dawn chorus. I'd refilled the bird feeders yesterday, adding mealworms and fat blocks to the sunflower seeds already out there, and the garden was an abundance of sparrows. One of the old silver-cheeked cock spadgers made an appearance and was looking very spruce, which was nice. There are a couple of quite dark hen sparrows in the flock I don't remember seeing before. A coal tit tagged along, very dapper with its slate grey back and peachy yellow underparts, I don't know if it's one of the local birds or an Autumn arrival. The male blackcap is definitely an incomer, the earliest Winter arrival I've had in the garden. I must remember to fill the bird bath again tomorrow, not a usual November problem.

I got the 256 into Flixton and walked down into Wellacre Wood. It was cool enough to feel like November and somebody had forgotten to colour the sky in. The parakeets were shrieking in the trees behind the school and a mob of lesser black-backs were making a racket over Flixton village centre. The trees and bushes by the path into the wood were busy with robins, wrens and blackbirds and half a dozen goldfinches fed high in the birches and alders by the school yard. Oddly, no sparrows. The brambles are usually full of them.

Wellacre Wood 

The wood was eerily quiet. Were it not for a great spotted woodpecker calling deep in the trees it would have been silent. The greens, browns and yellows of an English Autumn were dazzling after the dull grey of the day.

Woodpigeons 

The horses in the paddocks were accompanied by flocks of woodpigeons and magpies; a handful of stock doves hid in plain sight amongst the woodpigeons. A couple of blue tits and some blackbirds rummaged about in the little cluster of hawthorns at the corner of the big field.

Jack Lane 

Jack Lane was quiet. A couple of moorhens muttered in the reeds, wrens bounced about in the undergrowth and woodpigeons flew overhead.

A few blue tits and great tits bounced about in the trees along the railway embankment but they were in pairs or small family parties rather than being in a mixed flock. Which didn't stop me keeping on looking, mind. Even the usual pair of bullfinches were nowhere to be seen or heard.

Dutton's Pond 

Continuing the theme of absence there was a notable lack of mallards on Dutton's Pond and just the one moorhen.

Blackbird, Green Hill

I had half an hours dawdle over Green Hill. Woodpigeons flew in to roost in the trees near the railway line; great tits, blue tits, robins and wrens rummaged about in the hawthorns and oak saplings and every fourth tree seemed to have a blackbird. I was just approaching the exit to Merseyview, thinking to myself how unusual it was not to have seen any long-tailed tits when I bumped into a flock of them. The light was bad and there was still plenty of leaf cover so I couldn't be sure if it was one or two dozen birds flitting about. Then I realised they were part of a mixed flock with at least half a dozen blue tits, a pair of great tits and a robin tagging along for the ride. Finally getting to see a mixed tit flock this afternoon restored my faith in the order of things.

Green Hill 

I walked down to Flixton Station for the train home. I was just crossing over the bridge when a skein of a hundred and eighty pink-footed geese flew overhead, which just fitted the weather nicely.