Mersey Valley

Willow tit, Sale Water Park 

I'd had an early start to the day then found I had unexpectedly got a free day after all. All my instincts were to go and get some sleep but it was a sunny morning with a hint of Spring about it and I didn't want to waste it so I sleepwalked my way over to Sale Water Park via Stretford Meadows.

The gulls were waiting for their lunchtime treat. A dozen black-headed gulls loafed on the school playing field, a dozen more sat on the roof of one of the school buildings with a similar number of lesser black-backs and rather more herring gulls.

It clouded over as I passed the allotments on Humphrey Lane. The hedgerow by the garden centre was busy with spadgers and long-tailed tits. I looked at the start of the path onto the meadows and decided it was too nippy for bog snorkelling so I stuck to the Transpennine Way path by the motorway. 

Stretford Meadows 

Robins sang, blue tits and great tits rummaged about and the pair of kestrels were back, the male sitting in the hawthorns on the Urmston side of the mound and the female in the hawthorns on the Stretford side. The parakeets flying about the cricket pitch were phenomenally noisy. There was a sporadic passage of gulls overhead moving on from the school playing fields to mooch on the farmland by the river or head over to Sale Water Park. I wondered if gulls go on school playground crawls the same way we go on pub crawls.

I wandered down to Stretford Ees still half asleep but kept on my toes by a mixed tit flock, a great spotted woodpecker and a lot of magpies. Oddly, I've yet to see a jay this year. And actually it was probably the calling of the parakeets keeping me awake. The Mersey was a lot calmer but there were plenty of signs of flood damage on the banks.

Black-headed gulls and common gulls, Sale Water Park 

There was a sailing class on the lake at Sale Water Park so the rafts of gulls were close to shore. There were a couple of dozen black-headed gulls in each together with a dozen common gulls by the near bank and half a dozen lesser black-backs and a couple of herring gulls in the raft by the far bank. The great crested grebe with the damaged wing was starting to look dapper as it was going into breeding plumage.

Common gulls and black-headed gull, Sale Water Park 

Last year I was falling over Cetti's warblers. So far this year, not a sausage. I was hoping the regular one by Broad Ees Dole would break the spell but it was nowhere to found.

Heron, Broad Ees Dole 

The water was still very high on Broad Ees Dole, the islands were underwater. A couple of herons loafed and preened and a couple of moorhens fussed about. A small group of mallards threaded their way through the trees and drains between Teal Pool, the main pool and the drowned willows beyond.

Coots and great crested grebes, Sale Water Park 

The usual gang of mute swans and Canada geese were mugging for scraps on the slipway and were being jostled out of the way by a flock of black-headed gulls. A few tufted ducks bobbed about with the coots and mallards. A couple of first-Winter great crested grebes had paired up and were doing a lot of synchronised head nodding before they got swept up by a flotilla of coots.

Willow tit, Sale Water Park 

I got myself a cup of tea at the café and sat and watched the willow tits on the bird feeders. There were quite a lot of people stopping by the feeders to look for the birds. Each time the great tits, long-tailed tits, coal tits, blue tits and nuthatches would scatter. And each time it was the pair of willow tits that were first at the table as the people walked away, they're more worried about being hassled by larger titmice than people.

Willow tit, Sale Water Park 

I decided I didn't have the legs to carry on either into Chorlton or on to Chorlton Water Park. I walked under the motorway and caught the 41 into Manchester, thinking I'd get off at Oxford Road and get the train home. We started to hit the traffic in Fallowfield and I didn't fancy sitting on the bus as it crawled through Rusholme so I bailed out at Platt Fields and walked through the park to get the 150 back to Stretford.

Platt Fields 

Song thrushes and robins sang in the park, parakeets screeched through the treetops and mallards were making baby ducks on the lake. I had a couple of minutes to wait for the bus and was glad of a pot of tea and a "Where do you think you've been?" from the cat.