A Cheshire twitch

Woodchat shrike 

The back garden is littered with young blue tits and great tits, which is no bad thing. Early doors two dozen large gulls loafed on the school playing field, equal numbers of herring gulls and lesser black-backs.

I parked the day's plans when I noticed reports of a woodchat shrike just outside Runcorn. I've not gone on a twitch this Spring (I wasn't expecting to see the golden oriole at Woolston Eyes and didn't) and woodchat shrike is a lifer that's been on my radar a couple of years. And it's been a couple of years since I've seen a shrike of any kind. And it was an easy walk. So off I went.

Red Brow Lane 

I got the train to Runcorn East and walked down the road and crossed the Bridgewater Canal at Borrow's Bridge. The other side of the canal is rolling meadow land with the North Wales line to the North, the West Coast Main Line running North/South through it and another branch of the Bridgewater Canal separating the meadows from a few more fields, Daresbury Park and Daresbury. 

Bridgewater Canal, the Cheshire Ring Canal Walk 

It was a simple walk: I carried on down Red Brow Lane until I got to the canal, I climbed up to the canal towpath and walked North towards the people walking South with telescopes and binoculars and smiles on their faces. They confirmed the bird was still about, but fidgety, so I had a chance of seeing it.

Southern marsh orchids 

Mallards and coots had youngsters to keep track of on the canal. Overhead there was a steady traffic of large gulls passing by in twos and threes, mostly lesser black-backs with a few herring gulls. A flock of swifts were very busy overhead, some of them swooping down to knee height. The bank was lined with orchid, nearly all of them Southern marsh orchids though here and there there'd be a peppering of Northern marsh orchid just to keep things confusing (they're generally shorter with blunt-headed spikes of flowers). Just to confuse things the more I noticed a couple of spikes of early purple orchid that had gone over. There was no confusion about the reed buntings which were quite happy to sit and sing in the tops of bankside bushes.

Reed bunting 

I noticed a cluster of people further up at the curve of the canal looking at something on the other side. It was the reed buntings that told me what and where, a pair of them in a bush were taking very great exception to something that then shot out of the bush and perched on the lower part of an electricity pylon. A very black and white something with a bright chestnut cap. My first woodchat shrike. I watched it flitting about for half a minute until it disappeared into some bushes and I went to join the others.

Woodchat shrike 

Woodchat shrike 

Woodchat shrike
A fidgety bird.

The shrike played hide and seek for ten minutes until it flew back to where I'd first seen it. It then flew over and perched in the lower rungs of the electricity pylon, at times looking like it was sitting in a nest of barbed wire. It wasn't a big twitch, there were never more than a dozen people there and they were all friendly and wanted to make sure everybody got to see the bird. Easily the best way to see something new.

Reed bunting, still objecting to the shrike

Woodchat shrike 

Woodchat shrike flying off into the bushes
That sideways tilt of the tail helped it suddenly jink to the side as it shot off.

The West Coast Main Line 

I thought I'd have an explore while I was here and dropped down from the towpath into the meadow. Skylarks and whitethroats sang as I walked along the path through a wheat field to the West Coast Main Line.  I passed through the little tunnel under the line into a big meadow criss-crossed by paths around a lushly vegetated depression that one of the maps I was using told me used to be a large pond. A large proportion of the swifts here were swooping very low over the grass. Starlings, goldfinches and linnets fossicked about in the grass, the starlings going to and fro to feed hungry mouths in household eaves. A yellow wagtail was a pleasant surprise, I heard it before I saw it fly past.

The North Wales line 

The trees by the North Wales line were noisy with the songs of blackbirds, robins, blackcaps and wrens. A buzzard lumbered up and floated over the trees. There were yet more when I passed under the line and followed the path on the edge of Bog Wood. A great spotted woodpecker made itself known, the magpies, jackdaws and woodpigeons were downright obvious. As the path lead into open meadows whitethroats sang in hawthorns thick with rose bushes.

Ladybird larva

The birds were all very camera shy. The little critters were more obliging.

Garden chafer and harlequin ladybird 

I reached the canal and walked back to Borrow's Bridge. The mallard ducklings were half-grown, the baby coots were tiny and one pair of coots were still on the nest. Those blackbirds not sitting on rooftop singing posts were rummaging about the canal towpath while chiffchaffs, blackcaps and whitethroats sang in the hedgerow.

Bridgewater Canal 

It was only ten minutes' walk back to Runcorn East station and the train home. It had been a pleasant few hours, the walk was good and, of course, it's always nice to see a lifer.