Moore

Peacock

After two days' grim weather where walking was limited to shopping and walking to bus stops I wanted to take advantage of what promised to be a decent sort of day so the plan was I'd go over to Moore Nature Reserve for a morning's wander then move on to one or two other places. The plan was. In the event I spent six hours wandering round Moore in glorious sunshine and surrounded by birdsong. 

River Mersey by Chester Road 

I got the train to Warrington and rather than bothering with buses I walked over to Warrington Bridge and down Chester Road. In the past I've made the mistake of heading down the wrong road at the roundabout here and I've learned to ignore everything except the river. If the Mersey's on my right-hand side I've got the right road. The Canada geese and mallards on the river agreed with me, as did the titmice bouncing through the roadside trees and the robins singing in gardens.

Lesser celandines

Just after the junction with Slutchers Lane I dropped down onto the Transpennine footpath and walked between the old Latchford Canal and the river to the viaducts. Mallards and moorhens drifted about in the canal, which is now little more than a long and very thin pond densely fringed with reeds and willows on this side and back gardens on the other. Brimstone butterflies fluttered about the margins of the path. Titmice bounced and sang in the trees, robins and wrens struck poses to sing in bushes, goldfinches and chaffinches sang from treetops. There was a tiny flock of siskins, four or five at most, it was difficult to keep track of them as they skipped through the alders and willows past a charm of goldfinches.

Latchford Canal on the left, the Mersey on the right

I passed under the railway viaducts and immediately turned right onto the path into Moore Nature Reserve. Then stood to one side to let a group of volunteers pass by after what looked like a major litter-picking session. I'd be passing more of them as I walked down the path. The trees were noisy with the songs of robins, wrens, great tits and chiffchaffs. They were joined a little further along by a song thrush and some chaffinches and carrion crows and magpies called in the background. The sun brought out the peacock butterflies and they spent most of their time basking on the paths.

Moore Nature Reserve 

Pumphouse Pool 

I took the side path and had a look over Pumphouse Pool from the gap in the hedgerow that had been Colin's Hide. I'd been hearing black-headed gulls on the way up, there were about fifty of them clamouring on the pool. Pairs of mallards, coots and tufted ducks quietly went about their business, cormorants sat on willow roots and dried their wings, and dabchicks hinneyed in the reed margins. About halfway down the pool I noticed a large nest in the tree by the cormorants. It was way too big, and low, for a crow's nest and it looked too structurally sound for a cormorant's nest so it was probably an old heron's nest. Or not so old: as I was looking at it a heron's head poked up and rearranged some of the sticks on top of the parapet.

Moore Nature Reserve 

Walking back to the main path I was serenaded by a coal tit from the top of a gorse bush. The moment the camera came out of the bag the coal tit hopped up into a birch sapling and sang from behind the cover of a mass of catkins.

The bird song was sustained as I walked down beside Pumphouse Pool. Blackbirds, dunnocks and a reed bunting joined in the medley. An oystercatcher called as it passed overhead and out of sight. A buzzard called as it circled on the thermals high overhead. 

Great crested grebe

I took the path into Birch Wood and checked out this side of the pool from the Pumphouse Hide in the company of a mistle thrush that wanted to know what I was doing but didn't want me to know it was there. Mistle thrushes don't do inconspicuous very well, they have a woodpigeon-like habit of barging about. Out on the pool there were some more tufted ducks and at least a dozen teal — the whistling in the tree roots sounded like more than a dozen of them — and a great crested grebe cruised about in the open water.

Pumphouse Pool 

Birch Wood 

Birch Wood 

Siskins and goldfinches fidgeted about the treetops deep in the wood. Great tits, robins and wrens bustled about in the bracken. It was all very agreeable.

Birchwood Pool 

Dabchicks hinneyed from the Birchwood Pool. Coots, mallards and tufted ducks drifted about on the water and pairs of great crested grebes barked at each other. There was someone already at the hide. We let on and swapped notes. "There's usually a dabchick comes across here about now," he said. And blow me, so it did.

Mallards

I walked on to the Lapwing Pool, where the ducks came close enough to the hide for photography. 

Mallard

Wigeon

The whistle of a wigeon was a surprise. There was just the one. A couple of pairs of gadwalls cruised about with the coots, tufties and mallards.

Gadwalls

Lapwing Pool

I checked the bus times. I'd just missed the 62 bus from Moore — the bus to Warrington passes through about the same time as the one to Runcorn — and I had an hour to wait for the next one so I went for a wander round Lapwing Wood.

Lapwing Wood

Goldcrests added to the songscape and bullfinches sighed in wild cherry trees. Treecreepers and long-tailed tits flitted about with beakfuls of moss, the treecreepers heading for big old, decaying, willow trees and the long-tailed tits diving into bramble patches. Nuthatches called but weren't seen, jays were seen but not heard. 

The bridge over the canal

On a whim I crossed the Latchford Canal, which hereabouts just looks like a more open stretch of wet woodland, and joined Lapwing Lane. It occurred to me that I've never walked the full length of the lane as it curves round the outside the reserve and back round to complete the letter D at the car park. So I did.

Buzzard

I'd been expecting, but not hearing, Cetti's warblers in the reeds and wet scrub in the reserve. Instead I heard one singing from a tiny patch of flag iris by a brook out in the open country. As I was listening to it a buzzard glided by and headed for the Ship Canal. At the bend in the road the ploughed fields were busy with flocks of stock doves and linnets, skylarks sang and a little egret fossicked about in the field margins.

The edge of Lapwing Wood 

Lapwing Lane 

I carried on round and past the houses then back into the reserve. The already crowded songscape was added to by the greenfinches singing in the hawthorns in the glades.

Lapwing Lane 

Bridgewater Canal, Moore

I'd missed another pair of buses and there was forty minutes to wait for the next. I wasn't convinced I had the legs for much more exploration so I walked into Moore and sat by the Bridgwater Canal watching the mallards bully the coots back while blackbirds chased each other in the trees. There are worse ways of waiting for a bus to Warrington.