Wellacre Country Park

Juvenile house sparrow

The two constants in the back garden are the noise of juvenile spadgers getting excited about having a bath and the noise of juvenile magpies stuffing themselves with rowan berries. The magpies get even giddier in the whitebeams down the road.

Juvenile house sparrows
Hen (left) and cock.
The cock's from one of the early season broods but still has signs of the yellow gape at the corner of his mouth.

It was a cooler, cloudier sort of day than yesterday and after checking on the ex-patient I decided to have an early lunch then go for a walk. So the sun came out over lunchtime and was quite fierce. I had the sense to wait a bit for that walk. I decided just to go for a potter round Wellacre Country Park, I had a feeling that the Mersey Valley would be like Fred Karno's Circus and I just wanted a quiet stroll.

I did, indeed, get a quiet stroll.

A few magpies rattled and a woodpigeon sang as I walked into Wellacre Wood. Most of this afternoon's small birds were only to be identified by their objections to my walking by. A blackbird and a blue tit in the hedgerows set the ball rolling. It was eerily quiet in the wood, the rustling in the trees being dead leaves being blown off twigs by the breeze or grey squirrels gorging on haws.

Wellacre Wood 

Wellacre Country Park 

I emerged from the wood to a glowering sky. Woodpigeons headed somewhere or other. Black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs drifted overhead. The fields were empty save for a crow. It started pouring down. I walked down the path to Jack Lane, passing a hawthorn full of spadgers. All the horses were on the big field by Jack Lane, together with handfuls of crows, magpies and woodpigeons. A crowd of swallows hawked overhead ahead of the darkest clouds.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

The rain was much-needed, I've started worrying about next year's dragonflies.

All the birds on Jack Lane Nature Reserve had more sense than me and kept under cover. Great tits and chiffchaffs squeaked and every so often a blue tit flitted between bushes. The treecreeper was a devil to find and I only saw one shoulder of it as it fidgeted round a tree trunk. The large white butterflies fluttering about in the woodland fringes didn't seem to mind the rain. It was the best walking weather all week, something I may remind myself when I'm moaning about the rain in February.

Walking down to Dutton's Pond I was aware of the muttered opprobrium from the fairly large mixed tit flock in the trees on the embankment but I only actually saw a couple of blue tits and a great tit. A pair of stock doves flying overhead in tightly synchronised formation were considerably easier to see and identify.

A few ducks, the coot family and a couple of moorhens pottered about on Dutton's Pond.

Haws

The rain stopped and the clouds parted and the sun came out and the walking became distinctly uncomfortable. I decided against a walk over Green Hill, I'd have done it happily half an hour earlier. Instead I walked down the path to Carrington Road, picking out the runners and riders in a mixed tit flock along the way, nearly all of them being blue tits.

I had a quick dekko at the Mersey, a moorhen shuffling about the bank and a grey wagtail hiding under Flixton Bridge. As I waited for the bus into Stretford a flock of swifts drifted over, yet another of what looks like being a series of last blasts of Summer.