Mosses

Pheasant, Chat Moss

It was another bright Spring day, slightly cooler and cloudier and with a brisk breeze but still very nice. The day had started with a free and frank exchange of views with the cat concerning the effects of a six o'clock alarm call on a person who had managed three hours of sleep and that punctuated by the almighty crash caused by a cat falling off a bookshelf in her sleep and taking some of the contents with her. So I decided not to go on a wild goose hunt in Lancashire and had that afternoon stroll over the mosses I didn't do yesterday.

The walk up Moss Road to Little Woolden Moss feels a lot shorter than the walk up Astley Road even though it's only about a hundred yards, if that, and most of that is eaten up by the meander through the allotments on the way from Irlam Station. It has the advantage that although it's lined with farms you're not standing aside for heavy vehicles every couple of minutes.

Moss Road

I passed New Moss Wood without going in for a nosy. The robins, house sparrows and goldfinches were singing in the margins and it sounded like the tree thinning was still going on over on the other side. Carrion crows rummaged in the fields and pairs of lapwings were dotted about in the grass in a surprisingly regular grid that was disrupted only when they took to the air for their display flights. The wind was taking most of the songs of the skylarks away from me, overlaying them with the song of a mistle thrush from a tree behind the farmhouse up the road. The furtive scufflings through the high hedge I passed were goldfinches, the scuffling on the metal barn roof a pied wagtail. Just before the motorway a covey of grey partridges was betrayed by the wind as it parted the grass and ruffled the feathers on their backs. A buzzard flew low over the field South of the motorway, another dug for worms in the field North of it.

Oystercatchers, Little Woolden Moss

The pools on Little Woolden Moss were quiet, just a couple of oystercatchers dozing on a groyne. Over on the farm a flock of black-headed gulls followed the tractor as it plowed the barley field favoured by the yellow wagtails. Suddenly there was an eruption of lapwings. At first I thought they'd been startled by the tractor but the panicky jinking and dodging soon had me looking for a raptor. I almost missed finding the peregrine, most of the time it was banking away from me and its rather sandy brown-barred underparts disappeared into the background. The rise and — unsuccessful — stoop removed any cause for confusion.

Little Woolden Moss 

The field by Lavender Lane was being dug over so any hopes of sighting a late season short-eared owl were knocked on the head. The usual kestrel was sulking over by the tall hedge on Astley Road. I don't know what English Nature has planned for these fields. The ones you can see from the train as you go by seem to be being dug out into carbon capture pools. I hope they keep some rough pasture for the farmland birds. I worry sometimes that farming monocultures are being complemented by conservation monocultures.

Twelve Yards Road 

Walking down Twelve Yards Road there was a distinct lack of songbirds in the trees and hedgerows for the first few hundred yards. Woodpigeons and a pair of Canada geese fed in a field of barley, lapwings and carrion crows on a ploughed field. A buzzard sat on a distant telegraph pole. The field of half-harvested willows was barren of birds. 

Things changed in the fields beyond the willow field. The hedges at the corner of the lane to the farmsteads weren't terribly busy but I could hear chaffinches and great tits rummaging about in there and a male kestrel was taking its ease. There was a flock of linnets with the lapwings, carrion crows and pheasants on the ploughed field opposite and a pair of mallards seemed to be trying to dismantle a bale of haylage (that's still a new word to me so I'm using it while I have a respectable opportunity). I had to look twice at one of the pheasants, at first glance it looked very much like a Japanese green pheasant but it turned out to be a very dark "old English" type pheasant.

As I approached the crossroads with Cutnook Lane a noisy pair of buzzards floated over the treetops and circled each other in the direction of Raspberry Lane.

Cutnook Lane 

It had clouded over as I walked down Twelve Yards Road and the wind was blowing for rain. I looked over towards Irlam and saw showers of rain passing through. I struck lucky: it wasn't until I was on the 100 bus to the Trafford Centre that it started pouring down.