A local potter about

Cormorant, Salford Quays 

It was a grey day, cooler than the recent norm, and I wasn't sure I wanted to have anything to do with the trains. After faffing round a bit I had a potter round my local patch before going over to Salford Quays to see if the apparently resident yellow-legged gull was about.

The back garden was busy, the spadgers demolishing the fat balls, the magpies trying to reclaim them, a pair of goldfinches gorging on sunflower seeds and sundry titmice whizzing about. 

There's a lone long-tailed tit that comes in, I more often see it in the elder bushes across the road. It seems to have become a satellite to the house sparrow flock in a similar way that some of the juvenile blue tits do in late Summer. I wonder if this is how individuals peel away from the family group to make their way out in the world, using the flocking habit as a survival strategy as they move out.

It's nice to actually see the wren, I don't often have evidence of it this time of year as it's not singing and it rarely pays much heed if I'm in the garden, it quietly goes about its business under cover when I'm around.

Oyster mushrooms, Lostock Park 

Lostock Park was surprisingly busy with birds. Pairs of blackbirds joined the mistle thrushes and magpies on the football pitch and a flock of pigeons occupied the corner by the Curzon Road entrance. Robins and titmice bounced around the trees and bushes and the wrens were very vocal about their objecting to passing by.

Lostock Park 

I don't see flocks of greenfinches often enough for my liking these days so it was good to see them bouncing and squeaking their way through the hawthorns on the old cornfields. For once they outnumbered the goldfinches. A flock of gulls swarmed about on St Modwen's Road, school's out so they had an eye on the workers having a snack lunch during their smoking breaks.

• Black-headed gull 7
• Blackbird 8
• Blue tit 6
• Carrion crow 1
• Chaffinch 1
• Collared dove 1
• Common gull 2
• Feral pigeon 18
• Goldfinch 9
• Great tit 4
• Greenfinch 13
• Herring gull 9
• Lesser black-back 1
• Long-tailed tit 10
• Magpie 9
• Mistle thrush 2
• Robin 6
• Starling 1
• Woodpigeon 6
• Wren 2

I got the Manchester-bound 250, got off at John Gilbert Way and walked through to the Imperial War Museum, passing a flock of thirty-odd goldfinches in the trees, blackbirds scoffing berries in the bushes and raucous herring gulls on rooftops. As I passed a vacant lot I thought somebody was giving their golden retriever a bit of a run. A second glance told me it was a particularly big dog fox which evidently was having no struggle finding its meals.

Central Bay 

For the next hour or so I strolled up and down the side of the Ship Canal between the War Museum and Clipper Quay. A pied wagtail fussed about on the path and mute swans creaked and groaned as they cruised by. There were dozens of black-headed gulls and herring gulls on the water, it was a lot early yet for them coming into roost. There weren't many lesser black-backs — they tend to forage further afield than the herring gulls — and a couple of great black-backs mingled with the crowds.

Cormorants, two subspecies
P. carbo carbo (left) with an acute angle to the yellow throat patch and P. carbo sinensis (right) with a square angle to the throat patch.

Cormorants were busy fishing in the Grand Central basin or were loafing in lines on Clipper Quay drying their wings. Both subspecies occur here, the "Continental" sinensis which tends to be an inland bird and carbo which tends to be coastal. In reality both occur wherever they can make a living. It's not often they'll let you photograph them side by side to compare and contrast. The easiest and most reliable way of telling them apart is to look at the yellow pouch on their throats.

Over by the Ontario Basin I could see a bunch of Canada geese and mallards fussing about the inlet with a crowd of black-headed gulls.

One of the mute swans had a leg ring I could read, which is how I reminded myself that trying to record a ringing sighting on a mobile phone is a bit of a pain. I did the necessary at home, logging it on the Euring website. I then looked up the ring and found it was a bird ringed as part of a project surveying mute swans in Northwest England.

Heron

I'd seen no sign of the yellow-legged gull. A big, dark herring gull amongst a group bathing by Gnome Island was a nice textbook Scandinavian argentatus bird even I could identify. Coots, moorhens and pigeons skittered about the first-Winter herring gulls and Canada geese on Clipper Quay, a heron stayed fast asleep even when the tourist boat passed by.

Black-headed gulls 

Walking back I kept scanning the gulls as they came and went. A pair of great crested grebes cruised across South Bay. A carrion crow shouted the odds from a tree on the far side. And a constant traffic of  herring gulls flew in and out.

Typically, I saw the yellow-legged gull as it departed. I have ambitions of actually getting a photo of it but only ever get to see its exit. As usual it was the yellow legs that caught my eye as it took off, this time of year they're more a yellow ochre rather than bright mustard yellow but they still catch the eye.

I spent a bit more time looking round and not adding to the tally then moved on. The X50 to the Trafford Centre was due so I got that while I could — it's another bus service we're losing, to be replaced by yet another service going from the Trafford Centre into Salford in the New Year. All was plain sailing until we got within a hundred yards of the Trafford Centre where we were stuck at the Ellesmere Circle roundabout for forty minutes then at the traffic lights outside the bus station for twenty. Every blithering idiot that doesn't know how roundabouts and yellow boxes work was on wheels this day. I walked from the bus station into Davyhulme, passing numerous instances of motoring idiocy on my way through the car park. I did a big shop in the retail park, waited for the 25 bus I'd left behind at the bus station and fifteen minutes later it passed by as a Sorry Not In Service. So I walked down and got the 256 home. 

I'd like to say that all the idiot car drivers were at the Trafford Centre but that proved not to be the case. Still, I got home safely in the end.