Wellacre Country Park

Swallow

It was another of those sunshine and shower days, though without the thunderstorms. Each time I put my boots on to go out the sunshine faded and it started bucketing down. It might be my age (it can't be, I'm Peter Pan), it might just be that I revert to sluggardly ways without the late cat spurring me on to beggar off out of her house so she can get some kip, whatever, I'm struggling to motivate myself to get out for a walk in lousy weather. In the end I got stir crazy and went out for a walk in Flixton and didn't get wet at all.

Spadgers
It's quite intimidating when they tool up en masse like this.

The spadgers were in the garden in numbers. They and the titmice did an efficient job of demolishing the fat balls I put in the feeders this morning. 

Notable absentees lately have been blackbirds. This time of year I'd usually have a few taking up residence in the rowan tree denuding it of berries. As it is even the magpies have got a bit bored with them as they've been splitting their time gorging on the whitebeam berries on the other side of the school and establishing the group dynamics of the Winter gang on the playing field. I did wonder if the blackbirds had all decamped to feast on what has been a very good year for haws and elderberries but I've been seeing lots of berries and scant few blackbirds.

Grey squirrel and woodpigeons
They sat like this for ages. There's obviously a backstory.

River Mersey at Flixton Bridge 

lI got the train into Flixton and walked down to Flixton Bridge to see what was on the river. A dabchick bobbed about in the current upstream of the bridge. I caught a drake teal disappearing into the cover of the willows on the bend downstream of the bridge. It's the first teal I've seen here. There's no reason why they shouldn't be here, I just haven't seen them. As I was looking to see if there were any more a kingfisher shot upstream and under the bridge. It's been a very good month for kingfishers.

Common darter 

I walked down and joined the path onto Green Hill. From this side it's easy to follow the path to the top of the hill without noticing the climb so I did that. Robins and woodpigeons sang in the trees and there were the calls of magpies and carrion crows in the fields but it was otherwise quiet. A couple of buzzards quietly circled the overgrown lagoons below the hill then drifted off towards Carrington Moss. Common darters zipped around the paths in the open ground on the plateau.

Pincushion galls on oak

Green Hill 

I'd seen plenty of large whites and speckled woods on the brambles at the foot of the hill. Up on the open scrub red admirals and painted ladies fed on the Michaelmas daisies and the last of the thistles.

Painted lady

I walked down into the patch of woodland where goldfinches twittered, great tits and chiffchaffs squeaked and squirrels bounced about in the canopy. 

Ducking under the railway I was confronted by temporary fencing and machinery, the gas mains running by Dutton's Pond are going to be dug up. There was repair work being done on the pond so it was fairly quiet. The coots were out in the open but the mallards and moorhens took some finding.

Dutton's Pond 

A nuthatch was calling in the trees as I set off towards Jack Lane. The mixed tit flocks in the trees on the embankment were hinted at rather than seen, occasional contact calls by blue tits and great tits and the bouncing of leaves.

Walking to Jack Lane 

The pools on the nature reserve were dry

There was more of the same at Jack Lane, with chiffchaffs and dunnocks joining in and even making an appearance by the pathside. Despite the recent weather the pools were just wet mud, some places for robins to skitter about. A handful of house martins hawked at treetop height over the reedbeds and were joined by a few swallows.

Swallow

Swallows were swarming low over the fields the horses were grazing. You never know when the last encounter with Summer migrants will be, I debated whether or not to have one potentially last go at getting swallows in flight and in the end caved in to the impulse.

Heron

I walked down Jack Lane into Town Gate and walked down Irlam Road to the locks. The house sparrows were busy in the hedgerows and the first starlings were turning up to the pre-roost on the electricity pylons. A heron sat on the opposite bank when I got to the canal. A few mallards drifted about listlessly on the water, fifty-odd black-headed gulls split their time between bathing in the canal, squabbling about getting splashed by new arrivals' landing on the water and loafing on the lockside with a few lesser black-backs and herring gulls. The pigeons were already roosting on the big lock gates.

Black-headed gulls 

A few more black-headed gulls fed on the filtration beds with a crowd of magpies and a grey wagtail.

Downstream of the locks cormorants loafed and preened on the lockside or fished in pairs by the gates. Three great crested grebes slept midwater and mallards hugged the banks. For once there was no sign of any mute swans.

Cormorants 

I wandered back and got the bus home from Town Gate. For all the wind and clouds it had kept fine after all.

Cormorant