Flixton

Sand martins, Irlam Locks

It was another splendidly sunny day, I was feeling a bit low energy and a bad night's sleep and the pollen counts vied for my attention but I didn't want to waste the weather. I decided I'd get the train into town and go out for a gentle dawdle somewhere, probably getting the train to Hadfield and pottering up a bit of the Longendale Trail or some such. I looked at the crowd lining the platform at Oxford Road waiting for the train into Piccadilly, I looked at the departure boards, I asked myself if I really wanted the experience of a warm, busy Friday afternoon Piccadilly Station waiting for uncertain trains and the answer was: Good God No!

So I got back on the train I came in on, got off at Flixton and had a walk round Wellacre Country Park.

I stopped to have a look at the Mersey at Flixton Bridge. Last time it was a dipper and a pair of gadwalls, today it was a grey wagtail and two drake mallards. Sometimes there's nothing, I quite enjoy the unpredictability of the game.

River Mersey, Flixton Bridge 

Blackbirds, chiffchaffs and robins sang by the riverside; blue tits, great tits, house sparrows and goldfinches fidgeted about, woodpigeons clattered around as they disbudded hawthorns and jackdaws commuted between the fields on the other side of the river and their nests over in Town's Gate. I walked through onto the path up Green Hill and blackcaps, wrens and whitethroats joined the songscape. 

Green Hill

Green Hill 

Peacocks, orange tips and small whites peppered the open slopes while speckled woods, holly blues and large whites fluttered about the wooded areas at the base of the hill. Every hawthorn bush had its cloud of St. Mark's flies to walk through, every bramble patch its whitethroat ready to scold passersby.

Walking back down through the trees and listening to the churring of blue tits and great tits as I passed and the tutting of long-tailed tits impatient for me to be on my way, I worried I haven't seen or heard willow tits here for a long while. I hope they've not been pushed out by the competition.

Peacock

I passed under the railway bridge, tiptoed around the sunbathing peacock butterflies and had a quick nosy at Dutton's Pond. A mallard duck was being bothered by two drakes, I'd spend the next hour watching her fly from place to place across the country park with them in hot pursuit. There's nothing courtly and gentle about mallard courtship. The coots and moorhens were muttering unseen from the flag irises.

Dutton's Pond 

The songscape resumed as I walked by the railway embankment to Jack Lane. A long-tailed tit bounced by with a huge beakful of insects and it stopped to pick off a few more aphids from a willow twig.

Walking to Jack Lane 

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

I could hear two reed warblers singing as I approached the path across Jack Lane Nature Reserve, one either side in the reeds. As I stepped over the gateway a third piped up over at the far end by Jack Lane. Then a sedge warbler started singing from the brambles at the side over towards the railway. For a couple of minutes it was bewildering as the four birds jammed scratchy improvisational songs, the sedge warbler slightly harsher and given to suddenly riffing off at an angle to the tune, the reed warblers keeping to the structure of the song throughout. They went quiet as I started walking along then the reed warbler next to the path decided I wasn't anything and resumed singing. For once I got a visual on the water rail as it squealed nearby, albeit just the wobbling of reeds as it passed through. It's a while since I've heard a Cetti's warbler here, it was good to hear one today.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve
No dragonflies yet.

I walked down to Town's Gate and walked down Irlam Road to the locks to have a quick look round before getting the bus home. The swallows had arrived and joined the sand martins on the telegraph lines. While the martins are nesting on the locks the swallows will be nesting in the nearby stables.

Swallows and sand martins

The sand martins were mostly prettying up, skimming the top of the water on the canal before coming to the wires to preen.

Sand martin

Sand martins

Sand martin

Sand martin

Sand martins, wet and dry

The great crested grebes were all downstream of the lock today, as were the cormorants. A pied wagtail bounced about the downstream lock gates, a grey wagtail the upstream. There were just the two common terns today, making enough noise for a regiment. There weren't many black-headed gulls and they were letting the magpies have sole rights to the filtration pans on the water treatment works.

I wandered back down Irlam Road and struck dead lucky with the bus home waiting for me at the stop. Back home a teapot was singing my name.