Mosses

Irlam Moss

It was yet another dull grey day. I caught up with my sleep and got the lunchtime train to Irlam for a wander over the mosses.

I walked down Astley Road. House sparrows muttered in the hedgerows and robins sang from every street corner. Just outside town a tractor was mowing one of the fields of turf and a ploughed field on the other side of the road was being picked over by magpies. Despite the robins singing in the trees and the blackbirds rummaging about in the verges it felt like a quiet walk. The goldfinches were in pairs, twittering from distant treetops and the woodpigeons and black-headed gulls were just passing by. There was a moment's excitement as a redwing jumped to the top of a hawthorn tree, chattered and jumped back down into the depths.

Roscoe Road 

I'd reached the junction with Roscoe Road when an object in the road caught my eye. I was puzzled for a moment then realised it was a male blackbird with a white rump and nape. I was digging in my bag for the camera when me and the blackbird both had to get out of the way of a lorry. For the next five minutes the blackbird paid peek-a-boo in and out of the bottom of the hedge by Worsley View and I gave up.

Crossing over the motorway it felt just as quiet. There were no signs of the flocks of pipits, wagtails and linnets of my last visit (it was a big ask to hope that the swallows might have lingered for my benefit). I managed, eventually, to find a distant couple of pied wagtails on the turf fields with the carrion crows and magpies. Starlings shared the telegraph wires with an immature kestrel, presumably thinking they were safer up there than as sitting ducks on the ground. The uneasy peace was disturbed when a crow chased the kestrel away and it retreated to a telegraph pole a couple of fields down. Further along I started meeting mixed tit flocks, blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits and at least one goldcrest. But it still felt very quiet 

Things changed at Four Lanes End.

A couple of dozen pink-footed geese flew high over, heading Northeast. The rough pasture at the corner of Lavender Lane was being cut and handfuls of pied wagtails and mistle thrushes were rummaging through the clippings. Way over on the far side of the field a couple of female-type marsh harriers were having a barney with the Little Wooden Moss carrion crows, a passing kestrel getting dragged into the fight for a moment before making a hasty exit. A couple more kestrels were sitting on the telegraph lines across the field. Evidently the mowing had disturbed a lot of small wildlife.

Twelve Yards Road 

As I turned and started walking down Twelve Yards Road a noisy couple of buzzards flew in to join the crowds. Further along the line of telegraph poles down the lane running North each had a carrion crow sitting on top. I'd just passed them when a male kestrel sped by with another male kestrel in hot pursuit. When the pursuer got to the end of the field of osier willows it stopped, rose up and circled high over the road making an odd squeaking noise I've never before heard from a kestrel. I've seen boundary disputes involving a lot of shouting and rough and tumble but not this sort of ritualised boundary marking before.

Chat Moss 

The walk down Twelve Yards Road to Cutnook Lane with the fields busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons, pheasants and stock doves was a lot calmer. The mixed tit flocks had chaffinches tagging along with them. 

I tend to use my 'phone for the landscape photography. The sun had poked through the clouds and the trees on the boundary of a field of barley stubble glowed golden against a slate grey sky. The 'phone had died. It's been playing up since I got a soaking a couple of weeks ago and when I had the battery replaced last weekend I discovered quite a bit of water damage so it didn't come as a shock though it was very inconvenient. As a precaution the past few days I've been recording in my notebook what I usually record directly on the BirdTrack app. The hour or so doing the update on my laptop is a nostalgia trip I'll be happy to forgo once the new 'phone's sorted.

A male sparrowhawk stooped over the field at the corner of Cutnook Lane. On his departure a bunch of chaffinches, blue tits and blackbirds emerged from the hedges. They took no notice of the calling of a buzzard from the trees further down Twelve Yards Road.

The fields and paddocks down the road by the motorway were busy with woodpigeons, black-headed gulls, carrion crows and magpies. It came as a shock to discover that the song thrush bobbing along by a piece of cut turf was my first of the month.

By pure dumb luck I had five minutes to wait for the 100 to the Trafford Centre and thence home. The circular walks from Irlam to Irlam over the mosses are always productive even if they're predictably unpredictable.