Pennington Flash

Long-tailed tits 

The robin started singing five minutes before dawn. Yesterday had been a long and tiring day, I was exhausted when I got home then had to run an entirely unnecessary errand, and I'd had a fitful night's sleep so I wasn't feeling at what passes for my best. Then the sneezing started. I galloped my way through the hypochondriac's lexicon while I made a pot of tea then looked out of the window and saw they were mowing the school playing field. It was a bright, sunny day, I decided on an afternoon dawdle round Pennington Flash.

The changes to the timetable for the 132 and 126 have settled down now. The 132 is scheduled to leave the Trafford Centre at five past and thirty-five minutes past the hour and the 126 at ten to the hour, except the times when they don't. I can sort of see the rationale for the fidgeting the times about but it plays hob with planning a journey. Anyway, I got the 132, got off at Sale Lane and got the V1 to Leigh, arriving two minutes before the 126 I'd have had twenty more minutes' hanging around the Trafford Centre bus station to get. 

There was still at least one house martin flying about the Sale Lane bus stop. This time of year I don't expect to see much down the V1 guided busway besides the magpies and woodpigeons on the grass verges. The hedgerows alongside are pretty dense, the leaves hiding all the small birds in there. A flyover raven as we passed through Tyldesley was a nice surprise. It looked to be heading for Cutacre. 

A bigger suprise came further along as we skirted Lilford Park. The bus had had to slow for a crossing point, as we passed a large tree in the hedgerow a small brown bird flew out from a branch, caught a fly and settled back on its branch. Which is how spotted flycatcher got added to the year list. I was almost as surprised at immediately recognising it as seeing it, they just have a completely difference jizz to our other birds but I see them so rarely these days I forget that. Back in the days when they were a regular, if uncommon, feature of my birding year the mantra was always: "Look for the interface between dark and light." Sitting in the depths of a well-covered tree next to a brightly sunlit busway would be spot on.

Pennington Flash Country Park 

I got the 610 to Pennington Flash and walked in from St Helens Road. As I got off the bus a buzzard floated slowly overhead, shadowed by a couple of black-headed gulls. A mixed tit flock rummaged through the hedgerow by the meadow, a couple of goldcrests popping out of the hawthorns to let me know they'd seen me before getting back to the business of gleaning insects from the leaves. The brook looked in a healthier condition than on my last visit and a bunch of mallards were fussing about by the bank.

Black-headed gull and mute swans

Tufted ducks 

The flash and the car park were busy. Nearly all the birds on the car park were Canada geese, most of the mallards preferring to sit in crowds under the trees and most of the mute swans herding together at the head of the brook. The usual sundry collection of black-headed gulls, moorhens and coots loafed by the bank. Out on the water there were large rafts of birds: tufted ducks fairly close in, coots further to the opposite bank and large gulls, mostly lesser black-backs, out in the middle. A few great crested grebes cruised about and a fishing party of a couple of dozen cormorants steamed out into the middle just short of the gulls. It's a long time since I've seen more than a handful in one of these groups. I couldn't see what they were catching but it looked like they were pretty successful at it. I'd heard a few chiffchaffs on the way in, a not-quite chiffchaff squeak in one of the bushes made me stop and I found a willow warbler in nice, clean yellow Autumn plumage rummaging about in the twigs.

Cormorants 

A couple of black terns had been reported on the flash. I assumed that's what the guys in the F.W. Horrocks Hide were looking for. I didn't expect to have much luck with the terns so had a look round to see what else was about. The lapwings were more easily seen than heard as they were hidden by vegetation on the bank of the spit. A few cormorants and herring gulls loafed at the end, mallards and gadwalls dozed, a chiffchaff fussed about in a bush by the hide and a Cetti's warbler sang from the scrubby undergrowth beyond. Way out, over towards the rucks, a few swallows were hawking over the trees and beyond them a hobby was soaring and swooping. It didn't look like the hobby was taking swallows, it was more likely catching dragonflies. As I looked down from the hobby to the flash I noticed a small, dark tern on a buoy. It was probably a black tern, the bird swooping around it was most definitely a juvenile black tern. They were both distant but showing well and I spent five minutes watching them. I told the other guys that if they waited a few minutes after I left the black terns would come and sit on the signpost in front of the hide. I rather hope they did, it would be a nice photo for somebody to have.

Hawthorn 

I walked down to the Tom Edmondson Hide past more chiffchaffs and mixed tit flocks and migrant hawkers hunting along the edge of the tree canopy, almost a reverse strategy to the spotted flycatcher. The warming-up exercises of the drake gadwalls on Pengy's Pool as they practiced their canoodling whistles sounded uncannily like the wheezes of bullfinches, the illusion spoiled by the complacent quack at the end. The Cetti's warblers were unmistakable. Reed- and scrub-cutting was in progress in front of the hide, the only birds to be seen were a couple of dabchicks that were studiously ignoring the work and a flock of long-tailed tits flitting between the willows at the back.

At Ramsdales Hide 

The reeds at Ramsdales Hide had been cut a couple of weeks ago. The water's so low most of the pool's dried out and is a sea of corn mint. Teals and shovelers loafed on the relict gullies and inlets, brown hawkers and migrant hawkers patrolled over the mint which was in full flower and full of insects.

Blue tit

Great tit

I walked round to the Bunting Hide. I was very conscious I'd not seen any finches and hoped for at least a chaffinch or two to fill the gap. No such luck. There was, however, a crowd of great tits, blue tits and coal tits which happily ignored the family throwing nuts to the squirrels at the other side of the hide, the great tits bobbing over every so often to see if there was anything they could grab. The dunnocks and long-tailed tits were a bit shyer but not by much. As I left the hide I noticed a couple of Southern hawkers flying high in the tree canopy. The butterflies were few and far between, mostly speckled woods with a couple of large whites and a red admiral.

Blue tit

Long-tailed tit

From the Charlie Owen Hide 

The pool at the Charlie Owen Hide was a shadow of its former self and mostly filled with mallards and gadwalls. A couple of herons loafed on the edge of the extended island and teals and dabchicks kept out of their way.

Pennington Flash Country Park 

It had been a very productive potter about but the tiredness was catching up on me and the joints were suggesting there'd be rain before nightfall. So rather than toddling back to the bus stop and getting a bus back into Leigh I walked up to the canal and walked down the towpath into Leigh. There are times when I don't know who's making these decisions, I'm just along for the ride. I was glad of it, though, as three or four kingfishers zipped up and down the canal as I walked along. I suspect one of the ones that headed into the trees looped back and came round a second time. It's getting to be a good Autumn for kingfishers.

Leeds and Liverpool Canal

I did okay by buses back and got to the front gate just as it started raining.