Wellacre Country Park

Jack Lane 

I was a bit more ready for another bright, warm day, a combination of a decent night's sleep and finally giving in and buying a cough bottle but not in that order. The woodpigeons started singing at dawn, the robin started, as robins do, to add those little variations that make you think twice when you hear the dawn chorus and the wren was giving it large from the gooseberry bush.

I didn't fancy Saturday public transport through the city centre and decided to keep things local, opting for a quarter-hour ride on the 256 and a wander round Wellacre Country Park.

Wellacre Wood 

I got off at Town's Gate and walked into Wellacre Wood. Robins, great tits and wrens sang in the hedgerows, woodpigeons clattered about in the treetops. The wood itself was fairly quiet as I walked through: a couple of blue tits passed by, otherwise all was magpies being uncharacteristically silent. 

Despite the dry spell the path to Jack Lane was very wet and muddy, requiring a couple of barbed wire balancing acts to negotiate the worst of it. A couple more magpies tiptoed round the horses in one field, a flock of woodpigeons fed in another and a song thrush skulked in the bottom of the hedgerows on Jack Lane.

Jack Lane 

A singing chiffchaff accompanied the robins and wrens in Jack Lane nature reserve. Moorhens and mallards skulked in the reeds. I thought I heard a water rail deep in the reeds but it was only a short, high-pitched squeak that wasn't repeated so I couldn't be sure. And there's always that unnerving if irrational concern that someone really could be slaughtering a piglet in the reedbed. A couple of long-tailed tits bounced through the hawthorns by the path. A sparrowhawk flew over the railway and headed for Flixton. I looked in vain for any signs of frogspawn.

As I walked down the path beside the railway embankment pairs of bullfinches and great tits flitted between the trees, blackbirds chased each other about and a heron flew over the embankment and headed for the Ship Canal. This Winter the fieldfares that usually haunt the trees on the edge of the reedbed by the field have been notably absent. I've no idea why, there's no obvious difference from last Winter.

Walking by the embankment 

The usual pairs of moorhens and mallards on Dutton's Pond were joined by a pair of Canada geese.

Walking up Green Hill 

Green Hill was relatively quiet. Great tits called in the trees by the houses, chiffchaffs sang in the hawthorns on the hill, a pair of bullfinches wheezed in the gorse bushes by the path on the way down. Jackdaws and carrion crows flew by and there was a thin but steady traffic of ones and two of black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs overhead.

An unaccompanied mallard duck dabbled by Flixton Bridge, an unusual thing this time of year when the fire in the blood takes the drakes something fierce. They'll not be nesting on this stretch of the river, the New Year floods scoured the banks clean of cover.

Barton Clough 

I walked through the local patch on the way home. The song thrush sang in its usual spot in the trees by the school. Wrens and great tits sang in the undergrowth as did most of the robins though a couple took to the treetops with the blackbirds. A chiffchaff laid claim to the stretch between the corner of the park by the warehouses and the tree by the path near St Modwen's Road, a bit ambitious perhaps as this is usually two territories. 

Lostock Park 

As I passed the play area in the park the first squadrons of black-headed gulls started passing overhead to the roost on Salford Quays. Forty-three passed overhead as I walked through the park in the sunset. Another eighty-five flew over on my way home.