Mosses

Astley Road 

There were all sorts all over the place on the bird alerts and it was a drizzly day of perpetual twilight so I decided to ease myself into the week with a stroll across the Salford mosses. And very quiet it was, too.

Things started busily enough, with every other rooftop at the bottom of Astley Road having a woodpigeon and the Zinnia Close spadgers busy in the privet hedges but things quietened down quickly once I moved into the farmlands. A couple of blue tits and a goldcrest in the first hawthorn bush of the hedgerow were a false dawn: the hedgerows were almost uniformly empty thereafter. A female kestrel shot overhead and headed towards Moss Road. Over by Roscoe Road one of the fields had a small mixed flock of blackbirds, redwings and starlings feeding on it. In the paddocks just over the motorway a male stonechat hunted from the wires of one of the fences. A little further along a small flock of goldfinches rummaged about in the catkins at the top of a birch tree. All else was woodpigeons and carrion crows.

Pink-feet in the mist

After a fruitless look round for owls I had a wander down Twelve Yards Road. Just as I was thinking it was going to be an empty sort of afternoon I found a hundred-odd pink-footed geese loafing and grazing listlessly over the other side of one of the fields. Presumably the same flock flew East over the fields a while later.

Pink-footed geese

Walking up to Croxden's Moss 

At the crossroads with Cutnook Lane I turned North and headed up towards Croxden's Moss in the rain to see if I would have any luck with the hooded crow that's still hanging round. In the misty half-light I wasn't even seeing any carrion crows. I was just about to give up when I saw two distant figures shuffling about in a clump of sedges in the open peat. One was a carrion crow, the hooded crow took some staring at, it looked like a disembodied head drifting about the sedges. At last it shuffled out into slightly thinner cover and I could see the bird's wings though its grey body still merged with the murk. Even then I contemplated getting the camera out and trying for a record shot but given what a lousy view I was getting through the binoculars the camera would have no chance.

Croxden's Moss 

I wandered back and headed down Cutnook Lane for the 100 bus as the rain got heavier. Somewhere the sun went down and It started to get even murkier. It had been a quiet afternoon but still worth the effort I thought.