Etherow Country Park

Mandarin duck

I'd had one of those night's sleep where the sound of arrival of the bin men is the cue to finally doze off, which put the kibosh on the day's plans. I decided to bob over to Etherow Country Park for a look at the mandarin ducks and to see if I'd have any more luck with dippers than I have had lately. I got the train into town, the idea being to get the train to Marple and walk through Brabyns Park over to Etherow Country Park. The idea being. That train got cancelled a few minutes after it was due to leave, waiting until the train to Rose Hill Marple on the next platform had left so that anyone wanting to go to Romiley or Marple were out of luck. So I got the train to Stockport and the 383 to Compstall Village and walked into Etherow Country Park about ten minutes earlier than if I'd waited for the next Marple train.

Etherow Country Park, by the car park

The lake by the car park was busy with waterfowl. The usual gangs of coots, mallards and Canada geese were there but there were also more mute swans than I've seen here in ages and the tufted ducks were back. I could only see one of the usual pair of farmyard geese, the Canada x greylag hybrid goose was still about and there were moorhens everywhere. Add to that about fifty black-headed gulls and the usual crowds of pigeons and jackdaws and it was quite lively.

Etherow Country Park 

Walking down to the weir I kept bumping into robins and dunnocks in the pathside vegetation. Goldfinches twittered in the tops of alders, long-tailed tits bounced through hawthorns and mixed tit flocks — great tits, blue tits and coal tits — skittered about the beech woods. For some reason the long-tailed tits stayed in their family groups and didn't mix with the others.

It was a while before I saw my first mandarins of the day, a pair lurking with mallards under the bank of the canal. The crowds turned out to be on the mill pond at the head of the canal.

River Etherow 
The waterfall is the overflow from the canal

The river was very high and running fast. I looked for dippers or wagtails because you never know your luck but it was a fool's errand, there were hardly any rocks above water. A pair of mistle thrushes sat at the top of a bare tree by the weir.

Mistle thrush

Jelly ear fungus

Keg Wood 

Looking over towards Ludworth Moor

I hadn't been walking long in Keg Wood before my legs told me we weren't doing this. Up to then I'd only been seeing robins and woodpigeons in the wood. As I stood and debated whether or not to force myself on with the walk a mixed tit flock flew over to see what I was up to and to tell me to beggar off. The vanguard was a nuthatch with a couple of great tits. More great tits, blue tits and coal tits flew in and I took the hint and headed back. Which was as well as I was dead beat by the time I got to the bus stop. I don't know what was wrong with me today.

Etherow Country Park 

Along the way I encountered a big group of mandarins loafing in drowned willows on the canal. The drakes were doing a lot of puffed-up breasts and flaunting of orange sails for the ladies, which were all being suitably demure about it. All charmingly different to the rugby scrums the mallards were indulging in by the car park.

Mandarin duck

Mandarin duck

Mandarin ducks

Martin Mere

Pochard

Looking at the weather forecast, if I was getting to Martin Mere this week it would be best doing it today. It was a lovely day and managed to stay that way all day.

The trains behaved all the way to my stop at Burscough Bridge. Along the way I was seeing more woodpigeons than I had done on this route last week, just ones and twos at a time but fairly regularly. It was mostly black-headed gulls — scores of them — on the damp fields of West Lancashire and the few large gulls were all herring gulls. And it was nice to see a small raft of tufted ducks on the lake at Pemberton Park.

By Red Cat Lane

It was cool and sunny, very nice walking weather though the cold breeze wasn't for mucking about and went straight to the gusset. I was glad I hadn't had that second cup of tea. Jackdaws bounced about the rooftops and blue tits, robins and blackbirds fidgeted about in gardens.

Stock doves, black-headed gulls and common gulls

Rooks and woodpigeons fossicked about in the stubble field South of Red Cat Lane. The field to the North had been sown for Winter barley. Black-headed gulls, woodpigeons, stock doves and common gulls were dotted about and a group of them were having a communal bath in a large puddle. Way over the other side, within easy running distance of the hedgerow, a covey of red-legged partridges rummaged about in the furrows.

Approaching Crabtree Lane I kept hearing fieldfares but was only seeing blackbirds in the trees. I finally found one — just the one, again — in a hawthorn in the garden of the house on the corner.

The field of Winter barley next to Brandeth Barn had a few dozen loafing lapwings laid out in a rectangular grid about three yards apart. I can't imagine why other than because they could.

Mallards

Arriving at Martin Mere I went straight to the Discovery Hide. The mere was chock-a-block, mostly with mallards at this corner. The shelducks were back with a vengeance, the sheldrakes battling for the attentions of the ducks. There weren't a lot of whooper swans, a few dozen, and a similar number of wigeon but there are many square miles of damp Lancastrian fields for them to be grazing. I suppose the same can be said for greylags, they were very thin on the ground at Leighton Moss yesterday, there were none at all on the mere today. A mute swan and cygnet cruised about midwater. 

The testosterone was high in the mallards

Mallard

Whooper cygnet

Whooper and pochard

Wigeons, mallards, shelducks and wigeons

The supporting cast was made up of black-headed gulls, pochards, tufted ducks and pintails, cormorants loafing on the islands and the flocks of a hundred or so each of lapwings and starlings over on the far bank. Every so often the lapwings and starlings would rise and swirl in a panic and most of the time I'd look in vain for the cause. One time it was because a lapwing had flown in and landed clumsily, barging into a couple of loafing lapwings and this became a panic. Another time the starlings noticed that a kestrel had been hovering overhead for the past ten minutes. A ruff joined in that excitement, the only one I saw today.

Mostly mallards 

Sheldrake and shelduck 

Whooper swan and swansdown 

The sheldrakes were being a bit combative 

Mallards, wigeons, lapwings and a black-tailed godwits which I overlooked until I reviewed the day's photos.

Whoopers and pochards

Black-headed gulls 

Way over in the fields beyond the mere a small flock of pink-footed geese were feeding for a while before setting off for the farmland between here and Southport. The white objects left behind were a handful of cattle egrets which skittered about like clockwork. Closer by a great white egret hunted in the field by the far corner of the mere while a heron dozed on the bank further in.

The feeders by the Raines Observatory were busy with great tits and chaffinches. The colony of tree sparrows that nested in the boxes here and by the Kingfisher Hide as was is a thing of the past, sadly.

Wood blewit

Walking to the Ron Barker Hide 

Small mixed tit flocks bounced through the trees along the path to the Ron Barker Hide. Jackdaws called in the trees by the road and woodpigeons passed overhead.

From the Ron Barker Hide 

At first sight the marshes at the Ron Barker Hide were deserted. A few dozen wigeons dozed on the far side of the pool on the right. It was easy to not notice the dozens of teal on Vinsons Marsh to the left, even though the willow scrub that sprang up over the Summer has been removed there's still plenty of cover for them. It only really became apparent how many ducks there were here when a female marsh harrier flew low over and they all rose up in a panic. A more low key panic ensued when she was joined a little later by an immature bird and they both floated off over the reedbeds. A couple of little egrets shrimped in the brook, a couple of cattle egrets flew by and headed towards Windmill Farm. A dabchick was busy fishing in the sluice in front of the hide, spending more time under the water than above. The five Canada geese I could see in the tall grass over to the side were the only ones I've seen for nearly a week.

To the Mere View Hide 

Walking back I had a look at the Mere View Hide (which used to be the Kingfisher Hide). The views were splendid and a handful of greylags flew past.

From the Mere View Hide 

I walked round to the Janet Kear Hide, having another look at the mere from the screens as I was passing and noticing that some more wigeons had joined the crowds of ducks. The feeders at the Janet Kear Hide were busy with blue tits, great tits, goldfinches and chaffinches and moorhens lurked in the pool under the feeders ready to catch any falling seed.

It was quiet at the United Utilities Hide. About a hundred lapwings loafed on the field with a few dozen pink-feet and a similar number of black-headed gulls.

The collared earthstars had lost their collars

From the Harrier Hide 

I wandered round to the Harrier Hide where it was evidently nap time for the mute swans and black-headed gulls.

Lapwings

It was time to leave if I was to get the train back to Manchester from New Lane. I didn't have time to go the long way round so walked up a very busy Marsh Moss Road to the station, passing a little egret fossicking about in the land drains along the way.

I kept my nose pressed up to the window as I looked for owls in the failing light and giving it up at Bolton. The trackside eagle owls in their aviary don't count.

Martin Mere 

Leighton Moss

Shovelers 

There was a good start to the day today with an adult yellow-legged gull landing amongst the assorted herring gulls on the school roof. It was the light catching the bright yellow of its legs as it landed that caught my eye. It's a shame it didn't turn up yesterday when it would have been okay for me to point my binoculars that way for a more detailed look at the bird. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same bird that keeps turning up at Clippers Quay on Salford Quays.

I thought I'd risk it and try and use up one of my complementary return tickets and head up North to see what was on the Morecambe Bay estuaries and have a nosy round Leighton Moss which like as not was going to be awash after the recent heavy rains.

The trains behaved impeccably. Which is atypical on a Monday. I got the Barrow train as far as Ulverston. Along the way I noticed the woodpigeons were drifting back here and there, nothing like their usual ubiquity but there were a couple of flocks of half a dozen between Bolton and Chorley. Jackdaws, rooks, carrion crows and black-headed gulls were far more in evidence.

Kents Bank

I was sitting inland, passing a huge flock of pink-footed geese on the fields below Warton Crag, mute swans on the pools by the coastal hides at Leighton Moss and both little and great white egrets roosting in the trees at Meathop. The incoming tide seemed to have driven the waders on the Kent Estuary upstream but there were plenty of black-headed gulls and mallards, all the eiders on the Leven were first-Winter and eclipse drakes. A fly-by merlin over the river Eea outside Cark was a nice trainbound tick.

River Kent at Arnside

Heading back to Silverdale there were a few little egrets on the salt marshes. There were more mallards than eiders on the seaboard side of the viaduct over the Leven. Scores of black-headed gulls loafed on the beach at Grange-over-sands and on the Kent at Arnside where the curlews waded thigh-high in the water and a drake red-breasted merganser drifted down the river.

The blue tits that got away

The floods at Leighton Moss had drained as quickly as they came and all but the Lower Hide could be negotiated in sandals. I went straight to The Hideout where the titmice and goldfinches were giving the feeders some hammer. Robins, chaffinches and dunnocks flitted about while mallards, pheasants and moorhens jostled for the spillings, which were copious as the goldfinches were at their most quarrelsome. I could hear a marsh tit but didn't actually see it until I was walking round to Lilian's Hide.

Coal tit

Dunnock

At Lilian's Hide 

Although the paths were dry the water was high. At Lilian's Hide all the ducks were scrunched up onto the bits of bank in front of the hide. For once there wasn't a single bird out on the open water.

Shovelers 

Shovelers 

There were scores of shovelers, teals, mallards and gadwalls and dozens of pintails. A few snipe scuttled about amongst the ducks.

Teal, shovelers and a snipe (centre left, about ten o'clock from the teal)

Shovelers 

Teal and gadwalls

Teal

Shoveler duck

first-Winter drake shoveler 

Moorhens pottered about in the drowned willows by the hide. A water rail squealed in the reeds and a Cetti's warbler had a short explosion of what I would say was half a song. It tried again and still didn't sing the full phrase.

Reedbed path

Robin
I'm going to have to carry a bag of mealworms or something, it gets embarrassing having to keep apologising to mendicant songbirds.

The reedbed paths were surprisingly quiet, occasional great tits, blue tits or robins in the trees and a few woodpigeons and black-headed gulls overhead. It was so quiet I kept hearing the metallic "pick" calls of bearded tits in the depths of the reeds though I didn't see a single one.

At Tim Jackson's Hide 

Tim Jackson's Hide was busy with people and the pools were busy with gadwalls, mallards and shovelers.

At Griesdale Hide 

The Griesdale Hide was just as busy with people but significantly quieter of birds, there wasn't even the usual crowd of crows and jackdaws on the fields beyond the reserve. Half a dozen cormorants loafed in the trees amongst the reeds and a buzzard soared over the hillside. A female marsh harrier floated by and disturbed a few starlings in the reeds.

Walking back to the visitor centre 

Walking back I heard a mistle thrush singing from a tree by the railway line, the weather wasn't anything to write home about but I hadn't expected it to provoke a stormcock into song. The trees between Lilian's Hide and the visitor centre were busy with titmice, chaffinches and goldfinches. I spent some time trying and failing to get photos of a pair of bullfinches extracting and eating the pips from guelder rose berries before I noticed the time and had to do a quick toddle for the last train back to Manchester for a couple of hours.

It was one of those odd sort of days where the birdwatching feels quiet but a substantial day list gets racked up.