Reddish Vale

Mandarin duck

The energy for plans A and B still eluded me. It was yet another splendid Spring day, the wind was warmer, I felt I really should make something of it. I got the train into town with a half-formed idea of getting a train to New Mills or Glossop and the bus into Hayfield for a dawdle along the Sett Valley, which is how I came to be on the Sheffield train. I didn't stay on to New Mills. As we passed along the viaduct over the Tame I looked down on Reddish Vale Country Park and decided that was today's walk. So I got off at Brinnington and walked round to the footpath entrance on Blackberry Lane.

Reddish Vale Country Park 

The reader has probably become weary of my listing what has become the standard Greater Manchester songscape of blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, dunnocks, great tits, robins, wrens and woodpigeons. I never weary of hearing it and hope I never do. Hearing isn't seeing mind, and even with the oaks and ashes barely breaking bud I was seeing perhaps a tenth of what I was hearing. Invisible whitethroats churred from hawthorns smothered in may blossom, long-tailed tits tutted from ivy-decked branches and tree canopies hid chaffinches, goldfinches and greenfinches. I had the consolation that the butterflies weren't a bit shy and were numerous and showy, the orange tips, small whites and large whites fluttering about the open and the grassy verges, the red admirals about the woodland edges and already extensive nettle patches.

Brinnington Beach and the Manchester to Sheffield railway

Mallard and ducklings

I walked down to Brinnington Beach, where the Tame turns on two sixpences before going under the viaduct. A mandarin duck and a kingfisher shot upstream, mallards drifted downstream. A platoon of mallard ducklings were being marched along the opposite bank by their mother.

Grey wagtail

I'd kept hearing grey wagtails but didn't see them until after I'd passed under the viaduct. A male was fly-catching from the river, flying up and snatching insects in mid-air before settling back down by the banks.

Grey wagtail

I almost missed the young wagtail fossicking about on the far bank.

Juvenile grey wagtail

The pond

A wave of sand martins descended over the river, a few house martins joining the crowd by the bridge back into historical Lancashire. I crossed over and had a nosy round the pond.

Coot

Coots were on nests, mallards had duckling entourages and a heron lurking on the far bank had a youngster in tow. I wasn't sure whether or not a mandarin duck was on a nest or not and wasn't for disturbing her to find out one way or another. Her drake walked over my way and gave me a hard stare, just in case. More mandarins pottered about on the pond. For some reason one of the coots had an intense dislike of unpaired drake mandarins and would charge across the pond to have a go at any that caught its eye.

Mandarin drake

I walked down Reddish Vale Road into Reddish for the bus into Stockport and thence home (it was the approach to rush hour(s) and I wanted to avoid the city centre). Male woodpigeons had fights in the trees, barging and clattering into each other until one backed off and flew away. In one case it was a good five minutes before the fight was conceded and there was a carpet of leaves and twigs on the ground to commemorate the bout. The standard Greater Manchester songscape prevailed, decorated by the twitterings of swallows as they hawked over grazing horses. I got to the bus stop on Reddish Road and watched the holly blues fluttering about the hedges as I waited for the bus.

Woodpigeons squaring up for more fisticuffs