Longendale

Goldfinches and blackbird, Hadfield

It was the sunny day after a very wet 'n' windy night and the fierce wind had the black clouds scudding past before they got the chance to rain. The magpies rattled in the back garden, the spadgers sulked in the roses. It was that sort of day.

Magpies, Stretford

After an intense day's birdwatching yesterday I'd promised myself a gentle Tuesday and was glad of it after a distinctly ropy night's sleep. What to do? Where to go? In the end I decided on an hour's potter about on the Longendale Trail as far as the stretch overlooking Bottoms Reservoir and back. There was likely to be more birdlife kicking about in the shelter of the high embankments as in any of my local woodlands, and besides it's a doddle of a walk.

Starting the walk from Platt Street 

It was bright and sunny, if cool and windy, when I got off the train at Hadfield. I hadn't even got as far as the Padfield Main Road bridge when the clouds rolled in and the gloom descended. This was the cue for the birds to go to roost. Robins stopped singing and took to ticking tetchily from the depths of ferns. A flock of goldfinches disappeared into some hawthorns, followed quickly by chaffinches, bullfinches, blackbirds and blue tits. Woodpigeons clattered into sycamore trees to be joined by noisy gangs of magpies while jackdaws flew over to their communal roosts in the woods by Woodhead Road.

Longendale Trail 

I got out into the open above Bottoms Reservoir. The rooks were still feeding in the fields with the sheep but a stray shaft of sunlight poking through a gap in the clouds seemed to be a signal for off and they all flew over the reservoir into the woods. The Canada geese carried on feeding, it was still a while before sunset even though it looked like twilight out there.

Peak Naze

Bottom Reservoir 

It was much quieter when I walked back, you wouldn't credit that so much bird life had disappeared into those bushes. A couple of magpies bounced about in the trees, a couple of robins sang. Blackbirds still fossicked about in the verges. Oddly, they were all males, black ghosts in the gloom.

I just managed to catch the next train back to Manchester (no panic, they're every half-hour). A buzzard circled low over the station to see me off.