Mosses

Black-headed gulls and starlings, Chat Moss

A weekend spent trying to catch up with some sleep achieved the square root of naff all save a frostiness in the domestic harmony between me and the cat so I set out for a walk to get some exercise and try to clear the brain fog a bit. At one o'clock in the morning the Met Office was promising a damp start to a generally fine if cloudy day but at eight o'clock the forecast was that it would pour down all day which it duly did. I shelved the plans for the day but was reluctant to do anything that put me at the mercy of Northern's usual Monday mayhem so I went for a walk on the Salford mosses.

Irlam Moss 

The Zinnia Close spadgers were reassuringly noisy as I walked down Astley Road. The woodpigeons were back sitting on the telephone lines and jackdaws flew overhead. The usual covey of grey partridges took some finding: they were in their usual field, tucked under the hedge by the houses. There were plenty of blackbirds and robins about in the hedgerows. Approaching the Jack Russell's gate I bumped into the first mixed tit flock of the day, a couple of dozen long-tailed tits and a dozen blue tits. The great tits by the gate seemed to be headed in the opposite direction. A small mixed flock of Winter thrushes, a dozen each of fieldfares and redwings, flew from the hedgerows whenever a lorry drove by and came back immediately it had passed.

The field immediately South of the motorway, by Worsley View, had over a hundred black-headed gulls competing for worm-dancing space with a similar number of starlings and a few dozen lapwings. Over the motorway a similar number of black-headed gulls were outnumbered nearly three to one by the starlings on the turf. It took a while to find the pied wagtails in the damp corner. It took even longer to find any lapwings, a handful were a few fields down. The mixed tit flock by the stables included a pair of goldcrests including a male with a very bright orange crest.

Kestrel, Chat Moss 

There were four kestrels at Four Lanes End: a male on the wires behind the farmhouse, another young-looking bird at the top of a tree over on Twelve Yards Road and two young birds hunting the rough pasture opposite the farmhouse.

There were contractors working around the outside of the reserve at Little Woolden Moss so there wasn't much to see as I walked down Lavender Lane except a few magpies and carrion crows. Ironically, all that work going on concentrated the small birds in the trees near the entrance to the reserve including a few blackbirds, robins and wrens and a fair-sized mixed tit flock including a dozen long-tailed tits. In contrast, the pools were empty with not even the usual gang of carrion crows to be seen.

Little Woolden Moss 

Twelve Yards Road 

I walked back to Lavender Lane and down Twelve Yards Road. A hooded crow had been reported earlier on the stubble field immediately North of the road that always hosts a crowd of crows, rooks and jackdaws. I could see them well enough, also woodpigeons, stock doves and starlings, together with a buzzard hunting for worms, but nothing remotely like a hoodie. The buzzard got fidgety and the corvids close by took flight for a minute, any hoodie in that lot would have stuck out a mile. It also scared up a dozen skylarks that had been feeding in one of the furrows. But no hoodie. I walked down a bit and bumped into a birdwatcher whose body language suggested he'd had no luck either. "I've been here a while," he said, "A peregrine came over about ten minutes ago and had everything up and I hoped I'd see it then but no luck." I commiserated and moved on quickly so's not to further jinx him.

Cutnook Lane 

There was only a very small mixed tit flock on Cutnook Lane: a couple each of great tits and blue tits and a handful of long-tailed tits. The turf fields opposite the stables by the motorway were flooded, three dozen magpies paddled in the damp grass on the rise, three dozen mallards dabbled in the pool by the lane.

Mallards, Chat Moss 

As I got to the motorway bridge a car pulled up by my side. "That hoodie didn't turn up," said the driver.

Cutnook Lane