Amberswood

Common tern

It was a warm, heavy and muggy morning after a hot and heavy night. I used my having to go into town to renew my monthly travel card as an excuse to stay inside and listen to the morning session of the Test Match. Had the collared pratincole not flown off last night I'd have dragged myself out to St Aiden's. The surf scoter at Audenshaw Reservoir was a lure but I wasn't up for climbing over fences in this weather.

The blackbird had started singing at twenty to four in the morning so had every right to be tired.

I went to get my travel card. As is always the way, after putting up so much up front I wanted to get some value for it immediately. I headed over to Amberswood for a reason that wasn't birdwatching. 

The Blackpool train was packed solid — the result of having half the usual number of carriages and the usual Friday afternoon demand — so I jumped ship at Salford Crescent. I had planned on getting off at Bolton and getting a bus or train to Hindley. Instead I waited ten minutes for the stopping train to Wigan which got me to Hindley twenty minutes later than planned, which was okay. I then walked the mile and a bit through Hindley to Amberswood.

Amberswood 

The path down from the Manchester Road entrance was busy with invisible birdlife. Blackbirds, goldfinches, chiffchaffs and robins sang from somewhere or other. Even the woodpigeons were playing hard to get. It was a relief when three dunnocks hopped across the path and a couple of wrens perched in gorse bushes to tut me on my way. The blackcaps and song thrushes that joined the songscape further along were voice-only actors. 

Great crested grebe 

A Cetti's warbler sang as I got to the lake. Black-headed gulls flitted about over the water, coots and a great crested grebe cruised about, mallards and a mute swan clustered by the bank near the benches over the far side, a heron lurked in the reeds. Large whites and red admirals skittered about the pathsides but unusually they were outnumbered by painted ladies. And would any of them stay still for a photo? No they would not.

Amberswood Lake 

I was looking for dragonflies. My social media feed had been full of photographs of Norfolk hawkers this week and a lot of them had been photographed at Amberswood. This is a scarce species that has recently colonised the area and I was interested in seeing if I could find one. The odds were against me but you never know your luck and it would keep me on the alert as I walked, no Midsummer daydreaming.

As I walked past the bird feeding station I saw a dragonfly zip quickly over the reeds. So there were dragonflies about and I should keep my wits about me. It zipped back my way. A fair sized dragonfly. A hawker with clear wings. A brown hawker with clear wings. Don't be silly, you don't just stroll up to the reeds and get presented with a Norfolk hawker. A brown hawker with clear wings and green eyes. Okay, you can just stroll up to the reeds and get presented with a Norfolk hawker.

The hawker zipped back into the reeds and I satisfied myself that the heat had got to me. After seeing what was either my third or fourth Norfolk hawker patrolling the reeds incredulity became acceptance, I really had been that lucky. The descriptions of this species always say: "A small hawker," but they struck me as being a fair size, definitely a lot smaller than a brown hawker which is the only likely confusion species, but then so is nearly every other British dragonfly. The conspicuous green eyes were very strange, unnerving and alien really, like somebody had forgotten to take off the plastic sheeting before shipping them out.

The hawkers were very active indeed and I gave up trying to get any photos and settled to watching one catching and eating midges on the wing, something it did with ruthless efficiency.

By Amberswood Lake 

Moving on, another Cetti's warbler sang and was joined by a reed warbler. A common tern flew in and fished the lake, I had more luck getting a photo of that than I did with the butterflies and dragonflies.

Amberswood 

I left the lake and took the path through the trees and meadows to Spring View where I got the bus to Wigan for the train home. The butterflies fluttering about the grassy verges were ringlets and meadow browns, about the brambles they were commas and small tortoiseshells. There was a very light sprinkling of common blue damselflies here and there, nowhere particularly conspicuous. Blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, every so often I'd pass a stand of elder bushes with a blackcap singing from the depths. A sedge warbler sang from the overgrown irises in a congested pond. A family of blue tits were heard but not seen. The woodland thickened up and song thrushes, wrens and chaffinches joined the chorus. 

Heading for Spring View 

It was teatime as I passed Widows Fishery and the mallards sleepily watching the anglers at work. I only had five minutes to wait for the 609 into Wigan and the train back to Manchester arrived at Wigan Wallgate as I walked down the platform. It had been another noisy quiet bit of birdwatching and I'd been dead jammy with the Norfolk hawkers.