Wellacre Country Park

Mallard, ducklings and a whole lot of hawthorn petals, Dutton's Pond 

Despite, or because of, waking up way before dawn and not being able to get back to sleep it was mid-afternoon before I could persuade myself to go for a walk. I got the train into Flixton and had a couple of hours pottering about Wellacre Country Park.

En route from the station I stopped by Flixton Bridge to see what was on the river. A pair of mallards were hidden in the depths of the foliage on the Cheshire bank, a Canada goose loafed on a little island downstream that was under a foot of water a month ago and a grey wagtail skittered about on the waterside.

Green Hill 

Fly Ash Hill Green Hill was noisy with warblers. Blackcaps and chiffchaffs drowned out the regulars in the trees, every patch of gorse or clump of hawthorns on the hill had a singing whitethroat. Pairs of blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits were busy foraging in the trees and bushes, particularly favouring the young oak trees in full flower. There was an edge to the wind that seemed enough to put the butterflies off in the open ground, there was a crowd of speckled woods and large whites in the shelter of the trees.

Green Hill 

Walking down the path through the trees by the railway line I was hit by the scents of the trees. Most of the blossoming trees are sweetly scented though hawthorns, and to a much greater extent the rowan blossoms to come, smell unfortunately like fish glue. Poplars and, to a lesser extent,  willows smell of aspirin. I'm perhaps too used to birch trees and sycamores to notice their scent. Oak blossom smells like white pepper left too long in an opened packet. A garden warbler added to the songscape while I was sniffing the trees.

Walking by the railway line

Hart's tongue fern 

Dutton's Pond 

More blackcaps and chiffchaffs sang by Dutton's Pond. Moorhens were heard in the flag irises, only one could be seen. A bunch of drake mallards cruised about at one end of the pond, a duck with her brood at the other and a lone black-headed gull circled low over the pond for no apparent reason.

I walked beside the railway line to Jack Lane. The trees on the embankment, normally noisy with small birds, were full of furtive rustlings and the occasional contact calls of titmice and robins.

Jack Lane 

Jack Lane was noisy with the incessant singing of three reed warblers, two in the deep reeds on one side of the causeway, one in the reed-fringed pools on the other. They drowned out the chiffchaff and wrens singing in the trees on the fringes. A buzzard floated low overhead, leading to the pair of nesting carrion crows leaving their station to watch its progress away from the treetop.

Jack Lane 

Way over the water treatment works by the locks a dozen black-headed gulls were making a racket over the filtration pans and a couple of dozen sand martins were zipping round high over them. Closer by, the field that had been vacated by the horses was carpeted with woodpigeons, starlings and magpies, the starlings darting back and forth to their nests in the eaves of the housing estate. The horses had been moved on to the field between the nature reserve and Wellacre Wood, the last of the ponies were being walked through as I passed by.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Wood was eerie quiet. Great tits and blue tits were about as fleeting shadows in the undergrowth, the blackbirds and robins as shapes shooting across the paths. All the birdsong was going on at the fringes of the wood by the school, the great tits, robins and blackbirds joining in with the chiffchaffs and blackcaps. The usual pair of parakeets were making noises in the treetops by the school playground.

I got the 256 home but decided to stay on and get a food shop done in Stretford, save me making another trip out. I'm glad I did, I added a house martin to the year list.