Mersey Valley

Cob Kiln Lane 

I'd had plans yesterday but after a long and busy morning I was too burnt out to do try and catch up with them. There was a bright and sunny start to today but I couldn't be bothered. It being the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend the back garden was bereft of birds and had I the energy I'd have caught up with the chopping back still needing doing. I kept returning to the reports of a great-tailed grackle in Speke. It wouldn't be a lifer but it would be a nice addition to my British list. Even if I was at full energy I'd still think twice before embarking on a Saturday twitch. I made another pot of tea. It wasn't my finest hour.

How much I really needed the exercise became apparent when I finally dragged myself out of the house and headed for Cob Kiln Wood. Crowds of starlings sang in the trees as I walked past the allotments, robins sang in gardens, goldfinches in treetops and woodpigeons on chimney tops. Half a dozen black-headed gulls fussed about the primary school playing field, magpies fossicked about the roadside, pigeons flirted under the motorway bridge. By the time I got to Cob Kiln Wood the joints in my legs were nearly moving freely but I had to give in and take the painkillers.

The bridge over Old Eeas Brook into Cob Kiln Wood 

Cob Kiln Wood 

Cob Kiln Wood was in a quiet mood. A robin and a great tit sang. Woodpigeons, parakeets, magpies and carrion crows clattered about. Half a dozen starlings rummaged about in a field, a couple of chaffinches flew between trees, every so often I'd find a blue tit fidgeting its way through a willow tree. 

The electricity pylons clearing 

Out in the electricity pylons clearing a flock of siskins spent more time flying about the tops of the alder trees than settled in them feeding. I couldn't see that anything was disturbing them, they just seemed to have the fidgets. It could just be that there's not a lot left to plunder in the alder cones and the call to move on to the woodlands where they breed is growing stronger. I had a wander in the birch woodland where a song thrush sang in the treetops and a pair of great tits churred as I passed their dogwood patch.

River Mersey 

I walked down Cob Kiln Lane to the river which was high and fast and bereft of ducks. Even the shoals at the bend of the river downstream of the weir, a favoured loafing place, was well underwater. A lesser black-back drifted by and headed upstream towards Sale Water Park.

Banky Lane 

Crossing over and walking down Banky Lane, Banky Meadow was quieter than Cob Kiln Wood but there were more birds about. Wrens, robins, blackbirds and great tits were stealthy movements in the undergrowth. The woodpigeons and parakeets in the trees were as close to stealthy as they ever manage. A chap walking his dog said to me: "I've just passed a lady with a macaw on her shoulder, if I told folk they wouldn't believe me." I believed him. I wondered if it was Pedro, the scarlet macaw that led its owner a few months' merry dance a few years ago. It wasn't, it was a very good-looking blue and gold macaw sitting on a lady dog-walker's shoulder.

Banky Lane 

It was that time of day when most of the buses on Carrington Road turn up at the same time and it was ten minutes ago. There was a ten minute wait for the 249 to Wythenshawe so I got that, the intention being to renew my monthly travel card at the Interchange there. I'd tried doing it when I was in Stockport the other day but the office was closed due to strike action and there's nowhere I can do it locally. And I couldn't do it at Wythenshawe either, the ticket office closes at four.

So it was a frustrating sort of a day and the birdwatching was very quiet indeed but as I got the tram to Trafford Bar and walked down to White City to do a shop I realised I was walking okay and pain-free so that was a result.