Stretford Meadows

Stretford Meadows 

It was a cooler, greyer and clammier sort of day and a combination of a bad night's sleep and a good book kept me from hurling myself into the outside world. I was tempted to go back over to Pennington Flash for another look at the lesser scaup but I try to avoid going to the same place two days running unless I missed what I was looking for the first time. 

I finished the book and had an afternoon wander across Stretford Meadows, the intention being to carry on into the Mersey Valley and end up wherever. As I walked past the station and allotments the blackbirds, robins and woodpigeons sang and swifts scythed through the air in twos and threes. My nose twitched as I walked past the recently-strimmed verges on Newcroft Road with their piles of macerated grass.

The house sparrows were busy in the hedgerows by the garden centre. Blackbirds, wrens, a blackcap and a chiffchaff sang in the trees. A couple of great spotted woodpeckers scolded at me before flying into the trees by the stables. The entrance to the meadows off the Transpennine Path was still baked hard despite recent rains.

Common red soldier beetles

I had two targets: to try and find the twayblades I saw flowering on the rise last year and to see if the lesser whitethroat was about. Consequently I kept to the main path straight up the rise. There was a thin but steady stream of birds overhead, mostly woodpigeons and pigeons while two swifts hawking at rooftop height were a constant feature. More blackbirds and chiffchaffs sang in the trees, ring-necked parakeets screeched from the treetops by the cricket pitch.

Stretford Meadows 

Out in the open meadow a small charm of about a dozen goldfinches twittered between bramble patches. Greenfinches, whitethroats and wrens called and sang from hawthorn bushes. The meadow was very green, all the grasses except the small patches of common reed were in full flower. The Southern marsh orchids and most of the vetches had gone to seed and the thistles were getting past their sell-by date. Most of the colour was provided by expanses of white clover and the first flowers of great willowherb, in a couple of weeks this will be a patchwork of pinks and greens. It felt too cool and gloomy for butterflies and sure enough the only one I saw out in the open was a small skipper I disturbed as I brushed past a patch of tufted vetch. I couldn't find any sign of twayblade in any of the likely places I found.

Coming down from the rise

A couple of swallows twittered past, flying with the swifts for a few minutes before heading into Urmston. Magpies fossicked about in the tall grass, a group of woodpigeons waddled down the verge of the service lane. A flock of sand martins swooped in and whizzed about the tops of the hawthorns for a few minutes before moving on. A brace of pheasants flew off in a panic, probably flushed by the dog somebody was whistling after (I remember the old days when dog whistles were "silent").

The Transpennine Path 

The hayfever was asserting itself. I'd taken the precaution of smearing grease round my nostrils as I walked into the meadows but I'd already had a faceful of powdered grass on the way down. Nose and eyes were streaming and it wasn't making for comfortable walking. I had no luck seeing or hearing the lesser whitethroat so headed down the rise and onto the Transpennine Path and gave up, walking down the path back round to the garden centre, passing families of long-tailed tits and great tits bouncing round in the trees, large whites fluttering about the birch scrub and being serenaded by song thrushes and blackbirds. 

I put my mask on as I walked past the strimmer verges and it made a difference. I should have had the sense to do that in the first place.