Mosses

Chat Moss

After Thursday evening's train meltdown I didn't want anything to do with trains yesterday. Which turned out to be just as well, I'd just walked out of the gate on the way to a walk round the park when I got a 'phone call telling me I was needed urgently to sort something out. Perhaps I'm getting the sixth sight in my old age. I couldn't raise much energy or enthusiasm for an excursion today, either, so I headed off to the Trafford Centre to play bus station bingo.

Right up to the moment I got to the garden gate it had been a bright, sunny day. Cool though it was it was mild for December. The clouds rolled in and looked ominous as I waited for the bus to the Trafford Centre. Luckily for me the stiff breeze kept them moving on and it was quite bright when I got off the 100 and started walking up Cutnook Lane.

The last time I came this way the scalped turf fields were busy with finches and wagtails. Today there was not a one. Turf fields don't leave much pickings after harvest. A couple of magpies fossicked about on the fields, over the road half a dozen carrion crows rummaged about in the horse paddocks. I spent an embarrassingly long time finding the great spotted woodpecker that was taking exception to me in the naked beech tree three feet away from me. I could blame the sun in my eyes but not with any great sincerity. 

Cutnook Lane 

Cutnook Lane 

The hedgerows were dead quiet, as December hedgerows sometimes are. The birds are too busy with the business of survival to be bothered advertising themselves. A couple of blackbirds flitted about and robins and wrens ticked fron the depths of the bracken as I walked up the lane.

Walking up to Croxden's Moss 

The woodland walk up to Croxden's Moss was even quieter than the hedgerows. A couple more blackbirds and a wren fidgeted in the undergrowth and another woodpecker gave me a barracking and that was it. The pools could be seen clearly through the birch scrub and no waterfowl were on them. All year when you can't see anything of them there is no end of furtive quacks and squabbles, today not a sausage.

Croxden's Moss 

A skein of forty-one pink-footed geese flew low over Croxden's Moss and settled down noisily somewhere the other side of the railway line. About a dozen carrion crows rummaged about on the bends of the flooded moss and I checked every one of them just in case last Winter's hooded crow had paid a return visit.

Chat Moss

Croxden's Moss 

I walked along the rough path parallel to Twelve Yards Road. A passing chaffinch was the only finch of the afternoon, which is very unusual. Handfuls of magpies, woodpigeons and blackbirds flitted about the trees and a pair of mallards dabbled in the usual pool to the North.

Approaching Four Lanes End 

A male kestrel flew into one of the trees as I got to the path that takes me back to Twelve Yards Road. Another was hovering over the field on the other side of Twelve Yards Road. I'd been hearing the mutterings of pink-footed geese close to hand, forty-four of them were grazing deep in the rough pasture.

Short-eared owl

A short-eared owl was hunting low over the rough next to Lavender Lane when it wasn't sparring with a kestrel intent on pinching its prey (they were too far away for me to identify what it was). Further out the jackdaws and lapwings were flying off to roost.

By Astley Road 

I headed down Astley Road as the sun set. Mistle thrushes and blackbirds settled in the trees. Carrion crows fossicked about on the turf fields, which were being grazed by sheep. My passage down the road was marked by the ticking of wrens in the land drains, roughly fifty yards apart.

Irlam Moss 

The hedgerows South of the motorway were a bit busier. Great tits and dunnocks joined the robins, thrushes and wrens and pheasants called from the field margins. I walked into Irlam and put my trust in the train home and was only ten minutes late getting there. It was an oddly quiet sort of a walk for the solstice weekend.

A Lancashire wander

The weather forecast was pretty awful but I had the fidgets so I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and I decided to have a bit of an explore, joining the dots between routes I know and checking out some of the Pennine bus services. From a birdwatching perspective it was largely a matter of counting woodpigeons, gulls and corvids but the scenery looked good, even in the pouring rain, and we passed many a good-looking small village church along the way.

Clitheroe
Just so you know I wasn't sat at home making this up.

I got the train to Chorley and the bus from there to Blackburn. Here and there there'd be small flocks of rooks or starlings to make a change from the constant diet of woodpigeons, carrion crows, magpies and jackdaws. Chorley town centre, as ever, was busy with pigeons and black-headed gulls. Here and there there the bus would stop at a junction and there'd be a hawthorn bush busy with blackbirds. Lots of fields were peppered with molehills, the moles digging new runs to try to keep above the water table. Just before the M65 interchange one of the fields was carpeted with black-headed gulls. Along the way I added to my list of interesting-looking walks.

I got to Blackburn Station just in time to watch the Clitheroe train shut up shop and leave the station. I waited twenty minutes for the Colne train and stayed on to the end, watching the damp morning become a very wet lunchtime. Along the way I'd checked bus times and decided to head North to Barnoldswick then loop round to Clitheroe and get the train from there.

As the Colne train passed Rishton Reservoir I was surprised so see so few birds, just a few black-headed gulls, coots and cormorants. I can nearly always rely on seeing a big flock of pigeons in Accrington, nearly fifty of them today. The thin pickings along the way through Burnley, Nelson and Colne was probably down to the increasingly dreich weather though it didn't seem to be putting off the pair of mute swans steaming up the canal as we left Burnley Central. Otherwise there were a lot of glum woodpigeons, magpies and jackdaws sitting in trees waiting for showers to pass. 

The buses were passing by Colne Station again so there was no trouble getting the M5 to Barnoldswick. The reservoirs at Foulridge were even higher than on my last visit but I couldn't see much on them from the bus. A couple of herons were squabbling in a field as we passed New Hague, one of them flying in specifically to have a quarrel. There were a lot of collared doves on the television aerials of Earby and a big flock of black-headed gulls in a field outside Salterforth.

At Barnoldswick I literally stepped off the M5 and flagged down the 280 to Clitheroe following right behind. This is the Skipton to Preston bus. From here it heads North through Bracewell then West and swings down through Gisburn and Chatburn into Clitheroe. Even on a grim December afternoon the scenery's fine. Although I didn't see many rooks about there are some fair-sized rookeries around Gisburn. We passed a buzzard and a carrion crow sharing a small tree, the usual hostilities apparently suspended, rain stopped play.

I had ten minutes to wait for the Manchester train at Clitheroe. By my reckoning the light was going to fail by Darwen, in the event we'd got to Wayoh Reservoir when I gave up looking out of the window. Inevitably the bird life was nearly all woodpigeons, pigeons and corvids. A heron stalked a damp field near Lower Standen. A couple of buzzards shared a tree North of Wilpshire. A couple of Canada geese overtook the train as it slowed for the junction South of Blackburn and they headed off towards the city centre. Oddly, they were the first I'd seen all day. I got my full set of Lancashire corvids when the train flushed a jay sitting in a trackside hawthorn in Lower Darwen, by this time the light was so bad I was seeing this bird in shades of grey. A couple of dozen herring gulls were fussing about just North of the M65, I suspect they were heading to roost on Fishmoor Reservoir.

Humphrey Park trains

Despite the weather I'd had a good day out. There weren't a lot of birds about but I'd broadened my horizons and the scenery was worth looking at. Needless to say, it all fell apart when it got to getting home from Oxford Road. It wasn't a good evening for our local train service.

Martin Mere

Mallards, pintails and whooper swans

Today had the makings of being a nice day so I headed off for Martin Mere while I had the chance.

The train ride to Burscough Bridge was pleasant and uneventful. The trackside woodpigeons were back in numbers, it wasn't often I saw just the one bird. Magpies, black-headed gulls and carrion crows were much in evidence; pigeons, blackbirds, robins, collared doves and blue tits could be seen on rooftops or stations; and there were a couple of moorhens on the pools close by Hindley Station. The Douglas had broken its banks, almost but not quite merging with the lake at Pemberton Park where only a few coots and black-headed gulls lingered. The course of the river could be traced by the mist beyond the canal beyond Gathurst. We left Parbold and passed through a mist bank, emerging just before Hoscar. I got off at Burscough Bridge for a walk on a cool, bright Winter's day.

Red Cat Lane in the mid-day sun

The jackdaws were being noisy about town but there wasn't much sign of the local rooks. Nor was there much sign of either in the fields outside town. A handful of each flew about but the arable fields were left empty. Common gulls and black-headed gulls mooched about in paddocks or bathed in puddles, starlings and house sparrows fussed about farmsteads. It was all surprisingly quiet.

Martin Mere 

Arriving at Martin Mere I went straight to the Discovery Hide, as much for a sit down as to get my eye in on the waterfowl. 

Mostly mallards

The mere was packed. There were more whooper swans and wigeons than on my last visit and a lot more greylags, pochards and tufted ducks. The flocks of lapwings and starlings looked bigger, too, but for the life of me I couldn't see what kept putting them up. The shelducks were paired up and the pairs put a lot of time into quarrelling with each other. A scan round the near bank found me a single black-tailed godwit, all the waders on the far bank looked to be lapwings.

Lapwings

Pochard

Tufted duck

Shelducks

A drake ring-necked duck has been showing well here the past few days. I soon found it, fast asleep at the edge of a raft of tufted ducks. It drifted about in dozy. A one point I thought a collision with a coot might wake it up but aside from shuffling its head and pushing its beak further into its back feathers it hardly noticed.

Ring-necked duck

Ring-necked duck

Cladonia
This lichen's on the stump next to the gate for the path to the Ron Barker Hide

The snowdrops were already showing by the Raines Observatory. I've been seeing signs of crocuses at home. It's been an oddly mild start to December, I hope we don't get caught napping with some Winter awfulness.

Pink-footed geese

Pink-footed geese fed on the potatoes at the Hale Hide while a little egret shrimped in the pool.

Little egret

Mere View Hide 

The view from Mere View Hide 

The views from the Mere View Hide were wonderful though lacking in bird life. There was some work done last week to enlarge and lower one of the windows so wheelchair users can see and it's made a big difference to the light in the hide, it feels less like standing in a pillbox. It wasn't so very long ago that the trees by the little pools here were busy with tree sparrows, I wonder why numbers have collapsed so badly.

Sunley's Marsh

Vinson's Marsh 

Teal

I had the top deck of the Ron Barker Hide to myself, which is very unusual. Vinson's Marsh, to my left, was very quiet. Sunley's, to my right, was busy with teal, they lined the banks of the pool and a couple of rafts of them dabbled and fussed on the water. The wigeons and a couple of mallards were lost in the crowd. Crows sat in the trees on the far side, venturing out every so often to irritate passing marsh harriers. At least six harriers, all of them female or immature birds, floated in and out of the reeds or sat on fenceposts at the edge of the marsh. A buzzard sat on a fencepost by a field, it took me a while to realise that the shape a few posts further along was a pheasant. A great white egret flew by but didn't stop, similarly waves of pink-feet and black-headed gulls. More closely to hand a dabchick was fishing in the drain in front of the hide.

Dabchick

Shaggy inkcap

Wandering back, I passed mixed tit flocks and checked the flocks of goldfinches in the treetops for any siskins or redpolls. I've not had a good year for bumping into redpolls and today was no exception, they were all goldfinches.

Black Bulgaria 

Walking back towards the visitor centre 

Whooper swans, mallards and wigeons

The waterfowl were gathering on the mere for the afternoon feed as I passed the screens by the path. By three o'clock the corner near the Discovery Hide would be chock-a-block with hungry beaks. In the meantime there was a lot of dozing and preening and squabbling about. The lapwings went up again and again I couldn't see the reason for it. I did manage to find a ruff in the mêlée.

Black-headed gulls, pintails, shelducks, wigeons and lapwings

Wigeons

Shelducks, black-headed gulls and pintails

Teal

A juvenile kestrel flew into the poplars by the Janet Kear Hide then flew down onto the grass on the other side of the fence to dig for worms for a few minutes before flying back into the trees.

Kestrel

Given the very damp conditions I didn't fancy the walk to New Lane so on a whim I took the short path round the reedbed walk which was mostly dry underfoot. Truth to tell, I saw a notice saying that there was a clump of bird's nest fungus a hundred yards down the path, I've never seen them before and I didn't today. But it was a very nice walk. 

Along the reedbed walk 

Reed buntings bounced about, appropriately enough, in the reeds. Cetti's warblers and wrens sang in the depths of the reeds as I passed. Teal and gadwalls and a pair of shelducks dozed and dabbled on pools. A chiffhaff squeaked as it flew between willows. Overhead a passage of lesser black-backs was just starting, they seemed to be all heading for the coast. A pair of ravens chased a carrion crow out of their patch of reedbed and in an obvious effort to replenish its self-esteem it flew over into the trees to join a gang of jackdaws barracking a buzzard.

The Harrier Hide 

Cattle egrets in the mist

The longhorn cattle were feeding in the fields close to the hides, accompanied by the now-inevitable cattle egrets. There were more gadwalls and teal with the shovelers at the Gordon Taylor Hide and a flock of pink-feet on the fields beyond. I was checking out the geese when I noticed a movement in the corner of my eye. As I lowered my binoculars a barn owl, glowing white in the low sun, flew down the drain and across the path in front of me then disappeared into the reedbeds.

I wandered back, feeling a bit giddy, and walked back to Burscough Bridge for the train home. I was so entranced by the sunset and mist-filled twilight I only caught the train by the skin of my teeth.

Red Cat Lane 

Near Crabtree Lane 

Looking towards Mere Sands Wood

By Red Cat Lane

Wellacre Country Park

Dutton's Pond 

I made sure I wasn't needed for an early morning errand and with a sigh of relief I caught up with my sleep, sleeping through what had looked likely to be a very pleasant morning. Twilight descended at lunchtime. I got the 256 into Flixton and had a wander round Wellacre Country Park anyway.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Wood would have been quiet but the titmice were getting one last feed in before bedtime so the great tits and blue tits chiacked me on my way. A couple of parakeets made a racket as they went to roost in the trees behind the school. I'm still a bit boggled by having local parakeets.

Walking down to Dutton's Pond 

I decided to take the path to Dutton's Pond rather than go over to Jack Lane. Heaven knows what that path would be like. Small groups of carrion crows and magpies rummaged about in the fields, I wasn't sure whether the woodpigeon and magpie on the dung heap were looking for food or warming their feet. Black-headed gulls drifted overhead but didn't seem to have any consistent direction in mind. None seemed to be going to roost at Irlam Locks.

Wellacre Country Park 

The approach to Dutton's Pond came as a surprise. No matter how often I do this walk I have it in my head that the path goes straight ahead and turn right for the pond and every time I'm suddenly wondering what that pond is on the left side of the path. The curve of the path isn't so gentle as to explain the mistake. Old men forget. The reeds in the centre of the pond have been cut back a lot so the area keeps its value as shelter for young fish and doesn't become another island. Consequently there were a lot of moorhens out in the open, usually there's just two or three to be seen.

A quick look at Green Hill found me a mixed tit flock, or rather they found me. I got razzed by long-tailed tits then they bounced off with the blue tits and great tits into the brambles. Some of the woodpigeons sang in the treetops. A few goldfinches and chaffinches twittered about in the trees but it was otherwise fairly quiet.

Walking down to Jack Lane 

Turning back and wandering along the path by the railway embankment towards Jack Lane I wasn't sure if there were two mixed tit flocks or one very extended one. The family group of over a dozen long-tailed tits in the bushes near Dutton's Pond made themselves very conspicuous, the blue tits and great tits bounced through the hedgerows in silence and were easily missed. All the time I was distracted by the crunch, crunch, crunch of squirrels eating hawthorn berries, and blackbirds and redwings flitting between bushes.

The sun was nearly down when I got to Jack Lane Nature Reserve and the titmice and robins were settling to roost in the reeds. Somewhere in the depths a water rail squealed like a distressed piglet but otherwise even the magpies and woodpigeons settling into the trees were quiet. As I reached Jack Lane a flock of about thirty starlings flew in and disappeared into the reeds.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

Walking down Jack Lane I looked over towards Irlam Locks where another couple of dozen starlings were sitting on the electricity pylons. I could see no sign of gulls but about fifty magpies were bouncing round the water treatment works and the fields by Irlam Road. I wasn't tempted to walk round for a closer look at them, I turned the other way down Irlam Road and got the bus home.