Friday toddle

Juvenile moorhens, Brabyns Park

I was evidently tired after the past couple of days and a serious case of oversleeping knocked the day's plans for a trip out to Bempton on the head. A bright sunny day clouded over so I headed off to Etherow Country Park to have a look at the mandarin ducks.

Moorhen

I got the train out to Marple rather than drag the afternoon out with two bus rides. From the station I walked down the road and turned into Brabyns Park. A heron on the pond spotted me before I spotted me and it was off sharpish. Unlike a family of moorhens — the two adults and three full-grown juveniles — that emerged out of hiding and started pottering about the water lilies.

Brabyns Park 

I walked through Brabyns Park up into Compstall, a gentler suite of inclines than Compstall Road and a lot more picturesque. The mixed tit flocks in the woodland were accompanied by very vocal nuthatches and robins sang every hundred yards. Crows and jackdaws called from the parkland and ring-necked parakeets screeched their way around the mature oak trees. 

The last time I walked this way the iron bridge over the Etherow was closed for repairs so I ended up walking up Compstall Road anyway. I crossed it today and walked up Rollins Lane, passing the community woodland with its magpies, titmice, chiffchaffs and robins.

Canada x greylag hybrid goose

Crossing the road I walked up to the car park at Etherow Country Park. This end of the lake was a mass of Canada geese, pigeons and jackdaws with a few mallards and mute swans fitting in as best can and a tufted duck looking lonely on its own. A ghostly edition of a Canada goose — the product of a furtive pairing with one of the greylags stationed on the island — drifted over and hauled itself up onto the side, standing out in the crowd.

Tufted duck

I walked down the path alongside the canal. There were plenty of mallards, Canada geese and coots about and moorhens, pigeons and dunnocks fossicked about along the banks. A blue tit flying across the path and disappearing into the bushes was followed by a parade of long-tailed tits. I walked down to the weir without seeing any mandarin ducks. Nor were they on the river.

They'd all gone to bed early. There were whistles from the depths of the trees upstream of the weir and a dozen were asleep in the drowned willows at the top of the canal by Weir Cottage.

The mandarins had gone to bed

Keg Wood 

I had a quick look at Keg Wood, the knees suggesting that we might not enjoy a long walk. Titmice bounced noisily through the trees and a squadron of Canada geese passed by at treetop height.

Etherow Country Park 

The walk back down was fairly quiet. The jackdaws were flying in to roost in the trees by the courtyard and more Canada geese were flying in from parts unknown. I'd looked in vain for grey wagtails on the river, one flew over the bus stop as I waited for the 384 to Stockport and the bus home.