Mosses

Female black-tailed skimmer, Little Woolden Moss 

For some reason I was awake before the crack of dawn and stayed awake. I thought of all the things I could do with the day, decided I couldn't be doing with any of them and had an early lunch before getting the train to Irlam and a wander round the Salford mosses.

The day had started cloudy but a brisk wind was scudding the clouds away. It was one of those days where I was glad I didn't put my jacket on but should have chosen a thicker shirt. The wind was keeping the small birds under cover, the Zinnia Close spadgers had the privet hedges quivering and shivering with their chatter.

Astley Road 

Goldfinches twittered and blackbirds sang in the hedgerow trees. The first dozen or so of the hundreds of woodpigeons I'd be seeing this afternoon grazed on the turf fields with the first handful of what would be dozens of large whites. Further over, by Roscoe Road, a tractor was mowing another turf field closely followed by a couple of lesser black-backs and a flock of swallows.

Rowan berries

It was a fairly quiet walk up to the motorway. Swallows and woodpigeons passed to and fro overhead and there were dozens more out in the fields. Commas, red admirals and large whites littered the verges, keeping out of the wind. I didn't see a kestrel until I got to Worsley View. The field behind was busy to woodpigeons and stock doves.

Looking North from the motorway bridge

The turf fields on the other side of the motorway were busy with crows and gulls. On the far side of the field by the motorway a couple of dozen black-headed gulls loafed just to one side of a couple of dozen lesser black-backs. Swallows skimmed the mown grass tops, pied wagtails skittered about and the pair of mistle thrushes rummaging about a trip of newly-scalped turf had four mildew-mottled youngsters.

A lone sand martin passed by as I passed the entrance to Hephzibah Farm. It wasn't until there I saw the first house martin, very high in the sky. A garden warbler sang from the trees by the stables.

Kestrel

Four kestrels were hunting over the rough pasture at Four Lanes End, a male, a female and two immature birds. The young birds didn't look young enough to be this year's birds, I was surprised they were tolerated. The same field also had a flock of a couple of dozen stock doves, or a dozen pairs of stock doves, rummaging about in the long grass.

By Lavender Lane 

Comma

The entrance to Little Woolden Moss by the car park was fizzing with butterflies. Commas outnumbered the red admirals, large whites and peacocks. A common hawker patrolled the area at shoulder height, dipping occasionally to skim the bramble tops and getting mobbed by commas in the process.

Red admiral

Blackbirds, goldfinches, blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang in the trees. A whitethroat slipped into cover without making a sound.

Syrphus sp. hoverfly

Little Woolden Moss 

The crows were out in force on the open moss and were joined by a mixed flock of jackdaws and rooks. Willow warblers called and occasionally broke cover but were too busy for singing. The reed buntings and linnets were occasional low flying objects in the bracken. A kestrel flew leisurely overhead and headed for the barley fields to the North. A minute later a hobby shot by at head height, I had time to register an iron grey back and fox red pantaloons before it was gone.

Oystercatchers 

A first glance at the pools was misleading. It looked quiet but wasn't. A dozen black-headed gulls, including two very young, heavily tea-stained, birds, had found a sheltered corner near the jackdaws. The oystercatcher chicks were full grown but still showing brown tones in their plumage. There were a couple of dozen lapwings, the youngsters now full grown, and most of them standing close to the wicker hurdles to keep out of the wind. A mallard had nine tiny ducklings in tow and she marshalled them across the expanses of mud at a very brisk trot.

Most of the lapwings huddled behind the hurdles to shelter out of the wind

I'd hoped to see more dragonflies but the wind was keeping them undercover until I got to the birch scrub beyond the old hide site. Even them it was thin pickings. I looked at the basking site where I never see any lizards despite everyone and his dog telling me they've just seen one. There was a peacock butterfly and a black-tailed skimmer trying to warm up in the breeze. A handful of common blue damselflies bobbed about in the long grass and my first black darter of the year pottered about on the path before flying into some heather.

Cross-leaved hearg

Heading into the birch scrub

I decided to walk through to Little Woolden Hall and thence into Glazebrook and then go home. A few willow warblers flitted about the birch scrub, a blackcap sang in a thicket of birch and gorse.

By Little Woolden Hall

The fields by Little Woolden Hall were full of woodpigeons. Hundreds of them. Half a dozen stock doves and a couple of dozen pigeons lost themselves in the crowd. A skylark sang, a few meadow pipits and pied wagtails flew between fields, the swallows evidently had very active nests in the stables.

Mallards

A handful of drake mallards drifted up the Glaze upstream of the bridge. Two ducks and their ducklings loafed downstream.

It was an easy stroll down into Glazebrook with its spadgers and collared doves and I got the train home. I'd been lucky: I'd been upwind of the mown turf and pasture and downwind of the fields of ripening wheat and barley. Top tip for a high pollen count day: stick to ripening arable.

Stretford Meadows

Stretford Meadows 

It was a cooler, greyer and clammier sort of day and a combination of a bad night's sleep and a good book kept me from hurling myself into the outside world. I was tempted to go back over to Pennington Flash for another look at the lesser scaup but I try to avoid going to the same place two days running unless I missed what I was looking for the first time. 

I finished the book and had an afternoon wander across Stretford Meadows, the intention being to carry on into the Mersey Valley and end up wherever. As I walked past the station and allotments the blackbirds, robins and woodpigeons sang and swifts scythed through the air in twos and threes. My nose twitched as I walked past the recently-strimmed verges on Newcroft Road with their piles of macerated grass.

The house sparrows were busy in the hedgerows by the garden centre. Blackbirds, wrens, a blackcap and a chiffchaff sang in the trees. A couple of great spotted woodpeckers scolded at me before flying into the trees by the stables. The entrance to the meadows off the Transpennine Path was still baked hard despite recent rains.

Common red soldier beetles

I had two targets: to try and find the twayblades I saw flowering on the rise last year and to see if the lesser whitethroat was about. Consequently I kept to the main path straight up the rise. There was a thin but steady stream of birds overhead, mostly woodpigeons and pigeons while two swifts hawking at rooftop height were a constant feature. More blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, ring-necked parakeets screeched from the treetops by the cricket pitch.

Stretford Meadows 

Out in the open meadow a small charm of about a dozen goldfinches twittered between bramble patches. Greenfinches, whitethroats and wrens called and sang from hawthorn bushes. The meadow was very green, all the grasses except the small patches of common reed were in full flower. The Southern marsh orchids and most of the vetches had gone to seed and the thistles were getting past their sell-by date. Most of the colour was provided by expanses of white clover and the first flowers of great willowherb, in a couple of weeks this will be a patchwork of pinks and greens. It felt too cool and gloomy for butterflies and sure enough the only one I saw out in the open was a small skipper I disturbed as I brushed past a patch of tufted vetch. I couldn't find any sign of twayblade in any of the likely places I found.

Coming down from the rise

A couple of swallows twittered past, flying with the swifts for a few minutes before heading into Urmston. Magpies fossicked about in the tall grass, a group of woodpigeons waddled down the verge of the service lane. A flock of sand martins swooped in and whizzed about the tops of the hawthorns for a few minutes before moving on. A brace of pheasants flew off in a panic, probably flushed by the dog somebody was whistling after (I remember the old days when dog whistles were "silent").

The Transpennine Path 

The hayfever was asserting itself. I'd taken the precaution of smearing grease round my nostrils as I walked into the meadows but I'd already had a faceful of powdered grass on the way down. Nose and eyes were streaming and it wasn't making for comfortable walking. I had no luck seeing or hearing the lesser whitethroat so headed down the rise and onto the Transpennine Path and gave up, walking down the path back round to the garden centre, passing families of long-tailed tits and great tits bouncing round in the trees, large whites fluttering about the birch scrub and being serenaded by song thrushes and blackbirds. 

I put my mask on as I walked past the strimmer verges and it made a difference. I should have had the sense to do that in the first place.

Half-year review

Pied wagtail. Meols

After the cold and flooding of the beginning of the year an early Spring became an early Summer leading to official mutterings of drought in May. Not knowing when the spell might end I threw myself into taking advantage of the fine weather and by the predictably rainy late May bank holiday and the onset of a more unsettled June I was fair wore out. The list of neglected places looks similar to last year. The competition between new sites visited and sites yet to be visited was, and is, fierce and unrelenting, and the less said about the myriad speculative coo, I wonder where that goes the better. Plenty of them will be explored in time, I expect, I don't intend putting myself under any pressure about it.

The birding has been steady. It was a very quiet Spring for rarities but there was a steady stream of the regular scarcities though there are still a few notable gaps. January added shore lark to the life list, June added woodchat shrike. In between the bookends April saw an influx of migrants, June saw an explosion of young birds despite the cooler, wetter weather. The woodchat shrike brought my Cheshire &Wirral list to 200, I've added red kite and cuckoo to that list since then. (I don't keep an active C&W list, I'd just realised I must be close to the milestone so I did a bit of number-crunching. I do keep an active Greater Manchester list and it's not running far behind. They both lag well behind Lancashire & North Merseyside.)

Short-eared owl, Chat Moss 

I feel that the year list is light on geese and waders but when I actually look at it, well no it isn't. I think that impression reflects my experience of the weather rather than the birdwatching. The unseasonal weather is probably also why I've not seen fieldfares or redpolls in Greater Manchester yet this year.

The year list stands at 194.

Half-year totals of recorded species by BTO recording area:

• Cheshire and Wirral 110
• Cumbria 84
• Denbighshire 32
• Derbyshire 52
• Flintshire 29
• Greater Manchester 119
• Lancashire and North Merseyside 147
• Staffordshire 10
• Yorkshire 76

Gadwall, Marshside

I'll try to use the post-breeding lull to catch up with places but as always, anything can happen in the next half year.

Sedge warbler, Marshside

Shelduck and duckling, Woolston Ees

Pennington Flash

Great crested grebes and lesser scaup (right)

I sniffed the morning air and decided to knock the day's planned visit to Martin Mere on the head. It wasn't the weather for walking for hours in fields and reedbeds with little prospect of shady cover. The fact it also spared me travelling on one of the less reliable stretches of the Northern rail system didn't hurt any either.

Green Lane

It seemed a shame to waste a nice day, though, so I headed over to Pennington Flash where there's plenty of scope for hiding in the trees and it's never a very long walk away from a bus stop should I choose to call it quits in the heat. Along the way I noticed that a lesser scaup had been reported near the sailing club. I tweaked the plan a little: I'd hang on a couple more stops and walk up Sandy Lane to the sailing club. If I didn't connect with the bird I'd still have had a nice, sheltered walk along the South bank of the flash.

Swallow

Blackbirds, goldfinches and greenfinches sang me on my way up Sandy Lane while house martins and swifts wheeled overhead. I turned and went down Green Lane, past the sailing club and the water lily pond. Swallows twittered overhead and the pond was lively with common blue damselflies and broad-bodied chasers.

Pennington Flash 

The flash came into view and I had a scan round. The buoys out on the water alternated between having a common tern perched on top or a lesser black-back. A couple of the common terns were juveniles still begging loudly for food off parents eager to get them flying and feeding for themselves. 

Common terns
Juvenile begging for food

…come and get it

…not the most elegant catch but a young tern's got to learn

Mute swan

Mute swans and great crested grebes cruised about. A distant raft of coots and tufted ducks were being driven clockwise round the flash by canoeists. I hoped the lesser scaup wasn't in that crowd. Out in midwater there was a raft of large gulls, nearly all adults and three to one lesser black-backs to herring gulls. I bumped into a couple who were also looking for the lesser scaup, as we were talking a kingfisher shot across the bank in front of us. I took that, and the Cetti's warbler singing in a nearby bush, as good omens. I've not had any luck with kingfishers in Greater Manchester so far this year, hopefully this means a change of fortune. I wished them luck and toddled ahead.

Common blue damselfly

It was good to get into the shade of the trees for a stretch. Robins and wrens fossicked about; blackcaps, willow warblers, blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang and the undergrowth was fizzing with damselflies and butterflies, nearly all common blue damselflies and large whites until I got to a bramble patch busy with meadow browns, peacocks and commas.

Comma

Welcome shade

Pennington Flash 

I found a seat by the waterside and had a scan round. I suspected I was going to have to do a circuit of the flash to catch up with that raft of coots and tufties. I sat and watched the emperor dragonflies, huge green and blue flying pencils, hawking round the water's edge. I quickly gave up trying to get photos of them in flight, they can't just turn on a sixpence they can also fly backwards. An oystercatcher was sitting on a pier, more mute swans and grebes cruised about, coots and black-headed gulls squabbled. A raft of Canada geese and mallards drifted out from the car park across the way and headed for midwater. 

I looked back to where the lesser black-backs were loafing and bathing. Just inshore of them was what I assumed was a tuftie but on the grounds that any bird on its own that should be in a group is worth a second look I had a second look. It looked suspiciously like a lesser scaup. It was about the same size as a tufted duck but structurally different: lower-backed, big-headed and snouty. I was getting distant views of the bird and took a while to be convinced. I hoped the couple were still watching from their vantage point, it would have been directly opposite them.

Lesser scaup

A crowd of grebes diverted my attention and I spent a couple of minutes trying and failing to find any humbugs on their backs. I looked back for the lesser scaup and it had gone. A few minutes later it bobbed up in the middle of the grebes and I was seeing it well enough to confirm it as a male lesser scaup in eclipse plumage, its back ashy grey and black.

Lesser scaup and mallards

Dunnock
Typical dunnock, half-bald and tatty moulting and still trying to attract the ladies.

Broad-bodied chaser 

I carried on with my walk. Dunnocks and whitethroats joined the songscape in the more open areas, titmice rummaged about under cover betrayed by their contact calls. The bracken was awash with common blue damselflies.

Common blue damselfly 

At first glance there was nothing on the brook as I walked by it. A couple of flashes caught my eye. I assumed they were damselflies on the water and had a scan with my bins. It was a huge spawning shoal of minnows. Every so often the water would ripple as if taken by a gust of wind as part of the shoal changed direction and they became a ball of fish rolling under the bridge. 

Minnows

I had a leisurely walk down to St Helens Road for the bus back to Leigh. It had been a very productive afternoon.

Pennington Flash 

Home thoughts

It was a warm day, the pollen count was high and I was tired after yesterday's trip out. I'm at the age where being on the alert for small flying objects for ten hours straight isn't the easy ride it used to be. So I had a lazy day of it. The spadgers and juvenile titmice crowded the feeders all day except the ten minutes one of the squirrels had a go at the sunflower seed feeders. The adults titmice are like ghosts in the night. The blackbird had started singing at quarter to four but still had the energy to pick fights with its neighbour all day. The collared doves are more genteel about it, this time of year a fight usually consists of one pair landing on a television aerial another pair is sitting on. I've often wondered if it affects the reception.

The rooks have returned to the school playing field, a couple of dozen of them turned up today. I couldn't see any juveniles amongst them, it wasn't a safe day for standing pointing binoculars at a school. There are a couple of juveniles in the crowd of woodpigeons that are on there most days. The young magpies have already collected into a teen gang, or joined the existing one, I've no way of knowing for sure. The young jackdaws are still tending to hang about with their parents for now. 

I mentioned the other day that it's a much better year for butterflies than last year. It certainly is. This is the number of times I've recorded butterflies in my observations so far this year (orange) compared to last (blue dotted line). I'm not going out specifically to look for butterflies, these are casual observations while I'm birdwatching, but the difference is striking.

Hodbarrow

Black-headed gulls and Sandwich terns

I had a pile of Go Anywhere On Northern return tickets burning a hole in my pocket with more on the way so I thought I'd best get one used up. I've been "going to Hodbarrow" since the end of March and have either been distracted or put off by the lousy train services between Lancaster and Preston, I thought I'd best get out there, have a nosy round, get it off my worry list. So off I went.

I set off early for me, the rush hour hell to be avoided of the weekday is a leisurely journey on a Saturday. I got the Windermere train to Lancaster and the Carlisle train from there. Swings and roundabouts, on a weekday this would be a lot less busy than it was today.

The birdwatching had been quiet on the way up. Even the coastal pools at Leighton Moss were quiet, a handful of avocets lingered with some black-headed gulls, little egrets and a great egret. A carrion crow chased a marsh harrier over the fields just beyond as a red deer hind and her two half-grown fawns watched on.

A grey and cloudy day got greyer and cloudier and distant hills became faded pedestals for rolling mists. The tide was coming in as the train went over the Kent at Arnside, the last redshank beating a retreat as we passed. A couple of dozen eiders bobbed about on the Leven by the viaduct in the company of a handful of mute swans and a couple of mallards.

We passed the gangs of herring gulls and lesser black-backs at Ulverston and Barrow and the great mass of large gulls at the waste management site just outside Barrow. As the train traveled up the Duddon Estuary dozens of black-headed gulls and oystercatchers shuffled closer together on the mudbanks as the tide rolled in with the brisk wind. I looked over to the old osprey nest on Arnaby Moss but saw no sign of its being in use.

I got off at Millom and walked the mile or so to Hodbarrow. It would have been a heavy and uncomfortable walk but the wind was so brisk it felt like Spring. House martins and swifts swooped about at rooftop height, beyond the houses swallows skimmed low over the fields and shot across the road at knee height.

Little egrets and cormorants 

The distant sounds of heavy machinery in need of a regiment of grease monkeys resolved itself into the grunts and croaks of nesting little egrets and cormorants. The cormorants had young in their nests, I think there were one or two juvenile little egrets but at the distance from the path across the lagoon to the trees it was impossible to be sure of it. A handful of herons lurked about the bank under the trees with a bunch of mallards and mute swans.

Walking towards the old lighthouse 

The wind was keeping all the small birds undercover but, mercifully, they weren't all for keeping quiet. Chiffchaffs and willow warblers sang in the trees, blackcaps, dunnocks and greenfinches in the bushes and blackbirds sang from both. The robins crept about silently and I was surprised to neither see nor hear any wrens.

Hodbarrow 

Out in the open whitethroats sang from the depths of gorse bushes, reed buntings from brambles and a lesser whitethroat claimed the biggest hawthorn bush as its own.

Common thyme

I remembered seeing bee orchid along this path in the past and I kept a look out just in case. There were no orchids that I could see but there was plenty else in bloom.

Kidney vetch

Centuary

At last I reached the corner of the lagoon and the start of the sea wall, I always trick myself by thinking the end of that North bay is the start of the sea wall when it's actually the three-quarter mark. A small group of Canada geese steamed out of this corner and headed for the crowds on the shingle beach. The tide was nearly in on the Duddon with just a tiny patch of beach yet to be invaded.

Duddon Estuary 

The tern and gull colony in the lagoon

It was late in the season and there wasn't the frenetic feeding activity on the tern colony. Earlier in the year I'd have been ducking my head as terns flew low over the seawall between estuary and nests. A few black-headed gulls flew over, a few lesser black-backs flew by. I was wondering if I'd missed the boat but every so often the wind dropped slightly and I could hear terns calling.

Sandwich terns and black-headed gulls 

As it happened I hadn't missed the boat. There were still lots of Sandwich terns and common terns out on the shingle beach, together with crowds of black-headed gulls. A lady in the hide said that the little terns had gone, they'd been crowded out by the black-headed gulls and hadn't had a good season. The black-headed gulls had had a good season by the looks of it, some nests having half-grown youngsters, many of the older juveniles being capable of flight. Whatever their stage of development, God help them should they stray into another bird's territory. Some of them got a serious pecking until their parents intervened. The Sandwich terns seemed more sedate but they were at least as noisy. Many of the juveniles were flying with their parents, begging as they went. The common terns were more thinly spread and it took me a while to start picking up the juveniles in the crowds of Sandwich terns and black-headed gulls. A few pairs of oystercatchers with chicks were dotted about in the grass, a ringed plover with a near full grown youngster lurked near cover at the front of the shingle beach. A great crested grebe sat on its nest in the middle of a crowd of juvenile gulls and terns bathing in a tiny inlet by the beach.

Common tern

Sandwich terns and black-headed gulls 
A juvenile Sandwich tern just scuttled into the grass on the left.

Canada geese, oystercatchers, black-headed gulls and Sandwich terns

Common tern

Juvenile black-headed gull and ringed plover
Two different plumage strategies for merging with a gravel beach.

Black-headed gull and Sandwich tern 

Sandwich terns and black-headed gulls
Juvenile Sandwich tern limbering up at the front.

Millom from Hodbarrow on a grey and gloomy day

Black-headed gulls 

Crowds of Canada geese were everywhere. Eiders, all the drakes in eclipse plumage, loafed on the water's edge while a couple of dozen red-breasted mergansers sat offshore with a few greylags and mute swans cruised about aimlessly. A cloud of black-headed gulls shot in the air as a great black-back passed over ominously low and settled back down the moment it had gone on its way. All in all it was a lazy June day on the colony more befitting a sunnier sort of day. A flock of sand martins flew in to join the swifts hawking low over the lagoon to make the picture complete.

Mute swans, Canada geese, greylags and red-breasted mergansers

Duddon Estuary 

I walked back and watched the breakers hitting the rocks on the estuary. It had been good walking weather so I decided to take the path that loops round away from the lagoon before returning to the car park. Most of this path runs through the trees and I thought I might hear and see more birds with a bit of cover from the wind. I was rewarded with more blackcaps, blackbirds, willow warblers and chiffchaffs and a family of long-tailed tits bouncing through the willows.

There was about ten minutes to wait for the train back to Lancaster. We passed Green Road and I kept an eye out for the abandoned osprey nest and was astonished to see an osprey standing on it. The eiders had been pushed upstream of the viaduct on the Leven with the tide. Redhead goosanders dozed with the mallards and black-headed gulls on the last remaining mudflat at Arnside.

I got off at Silverdale. I had the choice of mooching around for an hour at Lancaster for the Manchester train or mooching around for an hour at Leighton Moss for the same train and it was an easy decision. And the birds were a lot closer to hand.

Robin

Robins and blue tits rummaged about the hideout while more blue tits jostled with the great tits, chaffinches, greenfinches and goldfinches on the feeders. The jostling about was providing easy pickings for half a dozen mallards and a pair of crows.

Carrion crow

As I walked through the trees to Lilian's Hide blackcaps, chiffchaffs, wrens and a Cetti's warbler sang in the undergrowth.

Chaffinch 

I had Lilian's Hide to myself, a pleasant novelty. The black-headed gulls were noisy and fidgety and will soon be taking their kids further afield. The coots crowded in their corner, the mallards and gadwalls skulked by the reeds. Greylag geese, a great crested grebe and a shelduck cruised about. In the distance I could see the great black-backs have two youngsters in their platform nest.

Mallard and juvenile black-headed gull 

Did I have time to go and have a nosy at the Causeway Hide? I checked the trains as I left Lilian's Hide. I had time enough to walk to the causeway (but not the hide) and back then on to the station without having to rush. If I missed that train I'd be stuck here for two hours after closing time and it was looking like rain. So I walked down to the causeway and back. I was rather hoping to bump into the marsh tits having had no luck on the previous couple of visits. I had no luck today, either. I did hear a booming bittern and watched a marsh harrier floating over the reedbeds.

I got back to the station with seven minutes to spare for the train back as it was running four minutes late. A Cetti's warbler sang in the rain from the reserve car park as the train pulled in.