Cob Kiln Wood

Wren in full song

The dozen or so lesser black-backs sitting on the school playing field at the start of the school day is getting to be a habit. Today there were a couple of herring gulls with them, some days they outnumber the lesser black-backs. Once in a while a black-headed gull will call in, it'll be a few weeks before I'll be seeing them in numbers. And soon after that the common gulls will turn up and the TV channels will be full of Christmas programming for the rest of the Summer.

I was still tired after yesterday's longer than it really should have been day. The pollen count was high and the cat had been sleeping on my shoulder while I slept so I felt sniffly and achy, too. I would have been content with having the day as a reading day but I got a bit bored of the cat walking up and down my face as I tried to read so I went for a short walk.

It had been a cloudy day but by mid-afternoon it had cooled a little, there was a useful breeze to take off the mugginess and it felt like the pollen count was dropping. I headed for Cob Kiln Wood, there's a lot less grass than on the local patch or Stretford Meadows and plenty of tree cover if it starts raining.

The walk down was fairly quiet, a few blackbirds and woodpigeons singing and the robins on the allotments getting into a singing match. There were more of them singing by the Torbay Road entrance to the wood along with chiffchaffs, wrens and blackcaps.

Bridge over Old Eeas Brook 

It was a fairly quiet wander round, a good walk but a bit lacking birdwise. Actually seeing much amongst the leaf cover was very hard work indeed and I didn't manage to see any titmice at all, and only heard the one singing great tit. Not even the usual undercover mutterings of long-tailed tits. The wrens and song thrushes pushed up the volume in the trees surrounding the electricity pylon clearing.

Cob Kiln Wood 

The electricity pylon clearing 

I walked down to the river for a nosy. Pigeons and woodpigeons flew about and on the curve downstream of the bridge a drake mallard swam past a fishing heron.

River Mersey 
There's a weir and salmon ladder under the bridge, hence the turbulence.

These big pink brambles are the default form for most of the wood, the rest being slightly smaller flowered and paler pink but still just as vigorous.

Cob Kiln Lane 

From there I walked down Cob Kiln Lane into Urmston. The singing blackcaps, wrens and robins gave way to blackbirds, chiffchaffs and goldfinches as the wood gave way to horse paddocks and stables. Woodpigeons and magpies fossicked about in the grass while families of starlings congregated in the trees on the margins. I'd hoped to pick up some swallows near the stables but it wasn't happening today.

A couple of house martins were feeding high over Urmston town centre. As I waited for the train home they were joined by a couple of swifts as the rain clouds rolled in but didn't get round to raining.

Wren bracing itself for a song

And now it's spotted me