Cutacre

Wigeon and gadwall

It was a day of surprises, starting with my popping round to check up on my dad and seeing a squirrel running down the street carrying a cooked sausage in its mouth.

It was also another very grey day though I won't grumble about it, judging by the weather forecast I'll be wishing for another one next week.

Next came an unexpectedly productive visit to my local patch, followed shortly by my watching a male stonechat perched on a wire fence hunting insects on the grass verge as the bus sat at the traffic light outside the Trafford Centre bus station.

I played bus station bingo, the 132 was first out of the hat so I headed for Cutacre.

When I've visited Cutacre in the past I've got off the bus at Tyldesley Town Hall and walked up Cumbermere Road to the railway and over the bridge into Cutacre. Crossing the roads to get to Cumbermere Road is a pain (potentially a literal one as there's a blind spot for the drivers at the crossing point) so today I got off a couple of stops earlier, crossed Manchester Road at the lights and walked up Cleworth Hall Lane, which turned out to be a lot easier and a nicer walk.

Cleworth Hall Lane 

Just past Cleworth Hall there's a gate and the lane becomes a farm track. Robins, wrens and house sparrows bustled about in the hedgerows, goldfinches twittered in the trees,  linnets twittered between fields and a mixed tit flock bounced through a stand of hawthorns. The fields were busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons and magpies with more of them flying overhead. Jays screeched about the young oak trees, stopping once in a while to give me the evil eye as I passed. A little egret flying overhead towards Bolton would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. I was standing by a gate trying to divine the identity of a medium-sized brown bird pounce-hunting from a distant hawthorn bush when fifty-odd siskins passed low overhead, all a-twitter. The medium-sized brown bird remains one of those mysteries birdwatching gives you to stop you getting overconfident.

The knees asked if we really had to

The stretch of railway line between Little Hulton and Atherton betrays Cutacre's industrial past by the number of bridges going over it. The one at the end of this lane boasted a high, steep staircase on the South side and a shallow, stepped staircase into Cutacre.

Birch boletes 

Wooly chanterelles 

The path wound through coarse pasture, damp woodland and past small pools, one big enough for a spot of fishing. The damp woodland gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how little I know about fungi, only readily recognising the almost ubiquitous honey fungus. The boletes were largely bashed-about and earwig-chewed, the shaggy inkcaps more ink than cap. The jays and magpies in the trees managed to outshout the gulls passing overhead.

Mute swan, black-headed gulls and herring gulls

The path twisted and turned and emerged at the Eastern end of Swan Lake. A couple of pairs of mute swans cruised about among the crowds of gulls. Herring gulls crowded about this side of the island while black-headed gulls jostled about by the bank. There were a few lesser black-backs and one great black-back, a dreadnought amongst cruisers. I scanned through the crowds to get a bit of practice in for another Winter of baffled gullwatching but found no surprises.

Gadwalls 

Nearly all the ducks were gadwalls, the handful of mallards needed searching for (they were all hiding in the grass on the island tucked in amongst the Canada geese) and there were only a couple of tufted ducks. A drake wigeon in eclipse plumage mingled with the gadwalls.  A female garganey's been reported most days on the lake but I wasn't seeing it. There was no way of following the path as it passed along the South side of the lake without upsetting the ducks by the bank, they swam out into the centre of the lake and were all gadwalls. A fluttering dragonfly turned out to be a female common darter, slowed down a bit by the cool weather.

Black-headed gulls, coots and gadwalls 

 

Wigeon

I'd walked most of the way round when I saw a small duck asleep on the mud at the North side. It looked a bit dark and cold brown for a teal but with its beak tucked deep into its back feathers I couldn't be sure it wasn't one, it was the sort of light where black-headed gulls look grey. As I walked round to where the path meets Engine Road I'd convinced myself it was a teal. Then I noticed that where a metallic blue-green wing patch should be there was the stripe of black and white you'd expect on a garganey. Out there in plain view and I still struggled.

Guelder rose 

The Himalayan balsam was still game if faded, the scent mingling with the smell of damp leaves like the sad end to a party. I walked down Engine Lane into Atherton. Black-headed gulls were giving a buzzard a hard time as it sat on top of an electricity pylon. It looked like a reenactment of "King Kong" but they were too far away to get the photo I wanted. The titmice in the hedgerows were a lot closer but kept to cover away from the camera lens. As did the bullfinches working their way through the guelder roses and hawthorns.

Engine Lane 

The 582 to Bolton was due in five minutes so i got that and then the trains home. That was a walk I'll repeat.