Damp Tuesday

Taylor Park 

A long-tailed duck was reported on the lake at Taylor Park in St Helens last night and again first thing so I headed thataway. I was unlucky with long-tailed ducks last Winter, Taylor Park is dead easy to get to and experience tells me that if a duck's there it'll be seen eventually, it's a nice, straightforward site to visit.

I got the train to Warrington and the 329 bus to St Helens. Along the way I had a surprise: you don't expect to see a common darter patrolling the roadside as your bus is stuck in traffic on Winwick Road in mid-November. The poor blighter's days were numbered, the weather was turning nasty even as we crawled along. Something else's days were numbered: a kestrel caught a vole on the verge as the bus approached Burtonwood. The vole still had a bit of fight left in it and it wriggled out of the kestrel's grasp about ten feet above the ground. The kestrel wasn't having any, swooped down and caught it in mid-air and flew off. It's difficult to identify a small mammal tumbling through the air from a bus waiting for a gap in the traffic to turn at a junction but judging by the length of the tail I think it was a bank vole.

The plan had been to get a Saveaway at St Helens Bus Station but there isn't one anymore, the temporary bus stops are dotted about the town centre. It was the sort of day that would be good spent sitting on buses finding my way round bits of Merseyside I don't know (the Knowsley and Croxteth areas are blind spots), it wasn't the sort of day for buying a day saver on the bus and trying to explore new places while trying to work out whether the buses you're aiming to use are run by the right bus operator. I bought a day saver and stuck to what I knew today.

Taylor Park

I'd hoped to get to Taylor Park and see the duck before the forecast wintry squall came in. It was raining lightly when I got off the bus and walked to the park. Blackbirds were scoffing berries in gardens and grey squirrels were romping about the Moxon Street entrance to the park. This leads directly onto the Taylor Park Dam, the lake the duck was reported as being on. And was reported to have flown away from forty minutes before I arrived.

So no long-tailed duck. There were no tufted ducks, either. There were plenty of mallards and coots, a handful of moorhens, a couple of Canada geese and a couple of mute swans. A chap told me a sick mute swan had been taken into care a few days ago, which is a worry. There were also dozens of pigeons and black-headed gulls together with a couple of common gulls and a herring gull. I couldn't work out whether one of the black-headed gulls had retained its brown hood since Summer or had prematurely moulted into it. 

It was nice to bump into a couple of mixed tit flocks in the surrounding trees, mostly long-tailed tits with a few blue tits and great tits and one goldcrest. The bird surprise of the day was the kingfisher sitting on the railings by the tearooms. It was off like a shot the moment it saw me.

Taylor Park 

I also bumped into the couple of people I met last week at Leasowe. They managed to see the Lapland bunting despite my being a jinx and they went back a couple of days later and got a closer view of it, and as a bonus they saw the snow buntings that had turned up on the revetment.

I got the bus back to St Helens and got the 320 bus to Wigan, like you do. We were barely out of the town centre when the heavens opened. And then it snowed. The downpour as we passed through Haydock washed away the evidence.

Viridor Wood 

Viridor Wood is on my To Visit list so I got off the bus in Bamfurlong and walked into the wood for a nosy round. The rain had calmed down so I pushed my luck. Also like you do. I was rewarded by half an hour of bright November sunshine, accompanied by flocks of redwings, mixed tit flocks bouncing about in the trees and at least one blackbird in every hawthorn bush. I kept to the metalled paths so as not to push my luck to breaking point.

Viridor Wood, by the West Coast Main Line 

Viridor Wood 

My luck held right up to my approaching the West Coast Main Line. I sheltered in the underpass for a couple of minutes and weighed up the options. I could carry on under the railway and walk over to Abram. Which is a nice walk with not a lot of cover and a bus every half hour from Dover Lock. Or I could walk round in the shelter of the woods back round to Bamfurlong where the buses are about three an hour. Which is what I did.

Coffin Lane Brook 

I took the shortcut along Coffin Lane Brook. One bone dry Summer and you forget how to walk in mud. First chance I got I took the opportunity to leave the moorhens to their own devices and get onto a metalled path. It was nice to finally see my first song thrushes of the month, though.

Viridor Wood 

I didn't have long to wait in the rain for the next 320 and I made the connection with the 132 to the Trafford Centre easily enough. As the bus sat in heavy traffic on Manchester Road I wiped the condensation off the window and looked out and a voice in the back of my head suggested a twilight stroll into Amberswood. I'm not proud of my reply but it came from the heart.