Mersey Valley

Blackbird, Sale Water Park 

The spadgers were taking full advantage of the bird baths filled by the overnight rain. What to do with a nice sunny day, I asked myself. I've hurled myself around the Northwest this week so I settled on a gentle potter, walking down to Sale Water Park via Stretford Meadows.

A big flock of pigeons — a coalescence of the expanding flock that suns itself on a roof a few doors down from the station and the dwindling flock from Barton Road — fed on the school playing field with a bunch of jackdaws, magpies and the usual couple of rooks. For once there were no woodpigeons about. A couple more magpies fussed about the station and a robin sang from one of the Pyracantha bushes. They're busy setting up their Winter territories this week.

I walked past the garden centre and joined the path onto Stretford Meadows. The robins singing in the trees by the car park were joined by a chiffchaff. I've seen discussions about why chiffchaffs sing in Autumn but nobody seems to come to a definite conclusion. Perhaps they're getting some practice in and as it's such a simple song they just do the whole thing. I heard a sedge warbler doing a few scratchy notes in the reeds at Leighton Moss yesterday but it was only a couple of seconds each time (I forgot when I was doing last night's writing-up) and I frequently hear Cetti's warblers doing robin-like phrases before eventually bursting into the familiar explosion of song, perhaps warblers — particularly the young birds? — need to practice. Robins certainly do and I'm often confused by willow warbler-like trills that turn out to be robins.

I could hear great tits and blue tits in the trees but couldn't see if they were operating as a flock.

Stretford Meadows 

Out in the open the most conspicuous birdlife was the squadrons of woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows flying to and fro overhead. Parakeets called in the trees over by the cricket ground and magpies fossicked about in the scrub. It's not often I see one stock dove on its own but there one was pecking about in a patch of vetches and short grasses halfway up the rise. 

Stretford Meadows
It's a bit mind-boggling to think of the amount of rubbish there must be under a municipal tip of this height and extent.

Speckled woods and commas fluttered about the blackberries, it was only later I realised there were no large whites about. A few house martins flew by, a couple of starlings flew into town, dunnocks and goldfinches pottered about in hawthorn bushes. I was receiving my fourth 'phone call and getting tetchy about it when a small bird with an alarm call I know but can't recall shot out of the bush I was standing next to and disappeared into the distance.

Speckled wood ready for take off

Buzzard

I'd been hearing a buzzard for ages and finally picked it up soaring very high over the meadows. About a quarter of an hour later it obligingly dropped down and circled over the motorway for a couple of minutes.

The Transpennine Route 

I dropped down onto the Transpennine Route where the cyclists were refreshingly polite and considerate to pedestrians. A song thrush scuttled out of the wayside as I passed by and ran into a bramble patch. A mixed tit flock, mostly long-tailed tits with a few blue tits and I think the pair of great tits were part of the flock, bounced through the willows by the motorway. A nuthatch was calling in the trees by the Chester Road underpass but I couldn't see it. I had no better luck with the one calling in the big willows a hundred yards further down the path. The mixed tit flock here included chiffchaffs and a chaffinch.

Stretford Ees

The path by the tramlines on Stretford Ees was unusually quiet, a chiffchaff at either end and a family of long-tailed tits in the middle. Even the usual parakeets weren't about.

Cormorants, Canada geese, mallards, gadwalls, mute swans and black-headed gulls 

There'd been some water sports activity at Sale Water Park and all the birds were distributed round the edges. Mallards lurked at the reed margins, the drakes nearly entirely out of their eclipse plumage. One of the great crested grebes was asleep just off shore. Over by the slipway the raft was crammed with cormorants, Canada geese and mute swans. Very oddly I couldn't see or hear any coots about.

Mallard

The vegetation at Broad Ees Dole has suddenly shot up and from the hide I could only just see the herons and moorhens on the island and a couple of gadwalls and a teal dabbling in the pool 

Acorns

Chiffchaff 

I walked beside the lake then up Cow Lane to the café. Wrens and chiffchaffs in the hedgerows marked my passing, goldfinches twittered in the hawthorns. A robin having a bath in a puddle was evicted by a blackbird and I waited for them to settle the quarrel and finish bathing before passing them by. The puddle was plenty big enough for both of them.

Blackbird and robin

It was past closing time at the café so I sat on the bench overlooking the feeders watching the crowd of blue tits and great tits tucking in. Robins and dunnocks fossicked about on the ground underneath, one of the robins occasionally flying up to have a go at the fat balls. Every so often a magpie would come in, decide it was too much trouble and flounce off, giving the coal tits the chance of an unchallenged go at the fat balls. A nuthatch came in a few times but the willow tits I was hoping for didn't make an appearance.

Coal tit

I walked down past the motorway to Wythenshawe Road and got the 248 which goes the long way round to the Trafford Centre, giving me the chance to add the swallows hawking round the stables at Carrington to the day's tally. If I'd got the previous bus an hour earlier I'd have made the connection with the train home from Flixton, as it was it made an excellent connection with the 25 at the Trafford Centre. It was sunset as I got home so I pottered over to the station to see if the bats were about and had no luck this time.

Flixton Road