Etherow Country Park

Mandarin duck

I thought I'd ease myself into the week with a nosy at the mandarin ducks at Etherow Country Park. Evidently somebody had 'phoned ahead to warn them, they were extremely thin on the ground this afternoon.

Tufted duck

For a change I got the train to Rose Hill Marple and then got the 383 to Compstall and walked up to Etherow Country Park. At first sight the only difference to the other week was that there were a few more tufted ducks in the mix by the car park and there was no sign of the usual greylags. A surprisingly loud goldcrest took issue with my walking too close to one of the bushes by the garden centre.

Canada x greylag goose

Etherow Country Park

Walking down by the canal I was struck by the lack of finches and mixed tit flocks. There were great tits and blue tits about but operating as pairs or singletons. On the other hand there were plenty of singing robins and wrens and a few blackbirds mussed up the leaves at the pathside.

Robin

Now the leaves are falling the views of the river opened up by the Spring tree felling become more obvious. It was an opportunity for me to look for dippers. I'd convinced myself I hadn't seen one in over a year, actually it was June this year. In any case, I didn't see one now. As I scanned the river from the bridge by the weir I found a couple of juvenile grey wagtails skipping round near the canal overflow and a lady and her small boy found a mink fossicking about near the rocks by the bridge.

Mink

The feeders in the Paddock Garden by Weir House were busy with titmice. Blue tits, great tits and coal tits jostled for position but the long-tailed tits I kept hearing were staying in the trees by the river above the weir.

Blue tit

I still hadn't seen any mandarin ducks. I wandered round the drowned willows in the pool by Weir House and eventually found a couple lurking in the shadows. But only a couple. The drake was busy preening and I was struck how the abstract shapes and high contrast colours that would make him strikingly conspicuous out in the open worked as camouflage with the lights and shadows in the depths of the drowned willow branches.

Mandarin duck

The same bird without the camera automatically amping up the ISO, a lot closer to what I was seeing through my bins

Keg Wood

A half hour's wander round Keg Wood until the joints shouted barleys found me a mixed tit flock — blue tits, great tits, coal tits, goldcrests and nuthatches but, again, no long-tailed tits — and a surprise in a noctule bat flying high about the tree tops. The weather wasn't brilliant but I hadn't realised it was that gloomy. The titmice had been keeping their distance but once I started taking photos of fungi they came to have a look at what I was doing.

Yellow waxcap

Honey pinkgill

Keg Wood

I think this is a milkcap

Walking back I passed a family of long-tailed tits bouncing round the pathside willows keeping aloof from the blue tits and great tits on the other side of the canal. I'd been wondering where the Muscovy ducks were and bumped into a couple dozing under a bush by an angler's platform. 

Etherow Country Park

Cormorant and black-headed gulls

Tufted ducks
The first-Winter drake on the right made me look twice. On his left-hand side his sides were pale grey-brown, on his right-hand side it was nearly white and nearly covered the wing. At a distance in this type of light I might have been tempted to say lesser scaup.

I got the 383 into Romiley and while I waited for the train to Manchester the station jackdaws kept me under close observation.

Jackdaw