Hindley

Coal tit, Amberswood 

I've not been sleeping well lately but last night took it to extremes, the last time I remember checking the clock it was twenty past five. Consequently, when I woke up at five to nine I felt like human wreckage and knocked today's plans on the head. After a late breakfast and a re-filling of the bird feeders I went over to the Trafford Centre and played bus station bingo. Luckily for me the 132 to Wigan was first out so I had an easy afternoon walk round Amberswood and Low Hall.

I'd barely stepped through the entrance from Manchester Road when I bumped into the first mixed tit flock in the hedgerow. A dozen long-tailed tits skittered about in the hawthorns on one side of the path and a few blue tits bounced about in the trees on the other. Robins sang, goldfinches twittered and blackbirds flitted about in the undergrowth.

Walking in from Manchester Road 

I bumped into a small flock of redwings plucking berries from hawthorns. I was today years old when I first learned that redwings don't give a monkey's about old men bawling: "Hello! Are you still there?" down a 'phone twenty feet away. Having, eventually, established that the person who had rung me up had not died nor had urgent need of an ambulance but had merely put their 'phone down and wandered off for God knows what reason I composed myself and ignored the naked scorn of jays and magpies. I quickly bumped into another mixed tit flock, this one with its complement of great tits, and yet more blackbirds and redwings feeding on berries with a small flock of woodpigeons.

Amberswood 

As I approached the lake a photographer tipped me off that somebody had just filled the bird feeders. As it turned out I would have needed no tipping off, the trees and bushes in that corner were fizzing with coal tits. The great tits, chaffinches and blue tits were a bit more cautious of passersby and a calling nuthatch stayed in the trees. I almost missed the willow tits slipping in past the coal tits to snatch sunflower seeds.

Amberswood Lake

Invisible water rails squealed at each other in the reeds as I walked by the lake. The reed buntings I'd expected but hadn't yet seen or heard suddenly started alarm calling as a buzzard floated low overhead with a hostile escort of carrion crows. I was hearing coots and black-headed gulls before I was seeing them. As the view opened out I could see a pair of mute swans and a bunch of mallards over by the far bank. Looking round I could see no sign of the usual great crested grebes or tufted ducks.

Amberswood Lake

Low Hall 

I wandered over the road to Low Hall where blackbirds, robins and wrens fossicked about in the undergrowth and coal tits and woodpigeons fussed about in the trees. There were a couple of teal with the mallards on the pond, while I was checking them out a blackbird and a song thrush came over to pillage the hawthorn bush next to me.

The pair of mute swans were on the little dragonfly pool, they'd shifted over to the pond when I walked back. A rather disorganised mixed tit flock bounced through the trees, the long-tailed tits heading one way and the great tits and blue tits heading the other.

Low Hall 

The sun was setting slowly in the West so I moseyed back and walked into Hindley for the 132 back to the Trafford Centre. The long journey feels twice as long in the dark.