Cutacre

Herring gulls and lesser black-back 

I slept through the major part of a cool and very grey morning, which is probably what I needed but put a crimp on the day's plans. A pair of garganey have been reported on and off on Swan Lake in Cutacre Country Park this past few days so I decided to see about adding them to the year list. As I stood at the Trafford Centre bus station waiting for the 132 with gloomy skies and a biting wind and a pair of black-headed gulls harassing a soaring buzzard overhead I wondered if my journey was really necessary.

A ten-minute delay at roadworks in Worsley gave me a rare opportunity to twig the titmice, blackbirds and woodpigeons in the abandoned lodge woodlands on Worsley Road. It felt like an omen but I stuck it out and got off at Tyldesley Town Hall and went over to Common Lane for the walk up to Cutacre. The moment I passed the gearbox repair centre on Common Lane the sun suddenly came out and it became a mild, sunny day. It was as if somebody had switched a light on. The robins, wrens and great tits had been in full song in the hedgerows, the sunshine had the chiffchaffs joining in too. There was still a cold edge to the stiff wind but there was plenty of cover to take the sting out of it.

Common Lane 

The hill with no name

Halfway up Cumbermere Lane I looked over to the hill that I think ought to have a name but doesn't seem to. A few crows and magpies had been flying about and I thought more of the same was coming out of the woodland. I was wrong: it was a pair of buzzards. They spent the next five minutes circling and calling before drifting back down into the trees.

Engine Lane 

At the end of the lane I turned and followed Engine Road alongside the railway line. The hedgerows were busy with singing greenfinches. Lesser black-backs and herring gulls circled overhead and I could hear more of them with the Canada geese over the line. A pair of lapwings were busy display flying over the wet field by the bridge when they weren't chasing off carrion crows.

Swan Lake

I crossed the bridge, dropped down into the open meadow and took a seat by Swan Lake. The lake has the advantage of being small, circular and nearly treeless, and the disadvantage of having a big blob of an island in the middle so it's easy enough to scan from bank to bank but you don't know what's lurking behind. There was plenty enough in full view to keep me busy for a bit.

Tufted ducks, herring gulls and lesser black-back

The lake was covered with birds. There were a couple of dozen Canada geese on the island with more on the bank by the railway line and scores of gulls loafing on the water with more on the island and yet more coming and going from some place to the West. Oddly there was just the one mute swan.

Herring gulls

There were perhaps a dozen black-headed gulls, most of them first-Winter birds. The rest were mostly herring gulls and most of them adults. The lesser black-backs were outnumbered about ten to one. The stiff wind was at my back so most of the gulls were sat facing me as they bobbed on the water, presenting a mass of white heads and breasts shining in the glare of the sun. Every so often I'd get a broadside view of a few birds as they moved around the lake, they'd quickly swing their sterns around so they were facing the wind once they got where they were going.

Oystercatchers 

A few coots, moorhens and tufted ducks picked their way through the gulls, the rest of the ducks kept to the water by the banks of the lake. About a dozen mallards dabbled with a couple of farmyard ducks by the bank on my right near the railway line, a dozen gadwalls dozed on the shallow bank on my left with a few mallards and tufted ducks. I couldn't see any sign of any garganeys. A couple of oystercatchers pottered round the corner of the island and flew over to the right bank to feed in the grass.

Herring gulls and lesser black-backs 

Gadwalls, mallards and tufted ducks

There wasn't a baffling variety of ages of gull out on the water but having so many adults huddled together close at hand like this really emphasised the variation in the size and shapes of herring gulls. It's not always so obvious from a distance.

Herring gulls

I took this detail from a photo because it shows some of variations in shape, size and plumage in herring gulls. Back in the day when every large gull with a grey back is a herring gull this didn't matter so much. These days when the "herring gull" complex is better known and better differentiated the variation between individuals can trip you up one way or another and it often drives me barmy. Experience has kicked the cockiness out of my gull-watching.

• The different shades of grey in the adult birds may be caused by their being at slightly different angles to the sun as much as any difference in the colour of the plumage. It's easier to judge difference in the grey shades on gulls' backs and wings in the flat light of a brightly overcast day, a bright, sunny day with a modelling light coming from one side can be hard work.

• The compact, round-headed, small-billed bird on the left is probably a female. It's relaxed so it's got its head tucked into its neck and there's a lot of round shapes to the body.

• The long-necked, apparently dark-eyed (it isn't) bird in the middle is on the alert. Gulls have quite long necks but herring gulls don't often stretch them out. There's a tenseness to the back and wings, flattening the back and making the neck look even longer.

• The long-billed, flat-headed bird on the right had me wondering a bit, especially given the amount of white in the primary wing feathers (Caspian gulls are like common gulls in that they often look like they're wearing fingerless mittens when in flight) but the very pale eye and overall structure otherwise say herring gull. Herring gulls can have very flat heads when the mood's on them, Caspian gulls' heads tend to be properly pear-shaped and yellow-legged gulls' tend to be rectangular. And that beak's a bit chunky for a Caspian gull anyway (mind you, I've not a lot of experience with Caspian gulls so I could be wrong there).

I was scanning one group of gulls when I realised that one of them had very long wings, the black-and-white primary feathers extending way beyond the tail. It was long-necked (but see the caveat above), small-headed and beady eyed and it was a slightly darker shade of grey than the others (but see the caveat above). I wasn't getting many side-on views of it so it took me a good five minutes to be sure I was seeing an adult Caspian gull. I spent a while longer trying and failing to get a photo of the bird side-on.

Things got a bit complicated with the arrival of some dog walkers. The birds on the lake didn't panic on their arrival, they just quietly shuffled back so there was plenty of lake between them and the dogs. The dogs were more intent on splashing about than bothering about birds. My gull-watching was further complicated by the arrival of a Jack Russell called Fifi that was insistent that I was there only to throw her stick for her and an Italian greyhound called Nigel with no apparent sense of direction.

Once they'd all moved on I settled back to scanning the lake. I was heartened to see a pair of teal hugging the far bank, if I'd missed them so far the garganeys might still be about. I decided to walk down to the lakeside for a change of direction and perspective, if Fifi and Nigel didn't scare the birds off they wouldn't be much fussed by me. And so it proved. I couldn't pick up the Caspian gull for a while, it had shuffled to the back of the pack and was only noticeable because it was slightly taller than the others.

Skylark

I walked back halfway to the path then walked along the meadow clockwise round the lake. I could only walk round a quarter of the way, I wasn't seeing any garganeys and I was just annoying the skylarks. I walked up to the path and back down to Engine Road, scanning the lake all the while just in case they might be circling the island anticlockwise.

At the stroke of four nearly all the gulls rose from the water, circled the lake in a crowd and headed West, leaving about a dozen herring gulls and a handful of lesser black-backs behind. I checked the time to confirm it was four o'clock, it seemed odd for them to be working fixed hours.

Swan Lake 

Chiffchaffs, dunnocks and robins sang as I walked down Engine Road towards Atherton where there'd be a variety of ways of getting home. Or would have been if the next two trains to Manchester hadn't been cancelled. I bobbed over the little footbridge and walked through Shakerley into Tyldesley for the 132 back to the Trafford Centre after another of those walks where you look for x and find y.