Flixton

Black-headed gull and common tern, Irlam Locks

It was a grey and gloomy sort of day with the sun making occasional weak attempts at glowing through the cloud. The wind was gentler and warmer than it had been and it would have been good walking weather if I could have summoned up the energy to get my act together. I couldn't so I settled for a longer than usual potter about Wellacre Country Park.

I got the train into Flixton and walked down to Flixton Bridge where a pair of drake mallards dozed on the river and the songs of blackbirds, robins, great tits and chiffchaffs battled to be heard over a song thrush in a sycamore tree.

Starting up Green Hill 

There was more of the same songscape as I walked onto Green Hill with blackcaps and wrens adding to the mix. As I walked up the hill whitethroats contented themselves with churring from bramble patches. Partway up I looked over the fields towards Flixton Road which were littered with woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows. A couple of lapwings looked to have set up a territory and a pair of pheasants strutted along one of the field margins. Overhead a buzzard got a carrion crow and jackdaws escort over into Carrington.

Green Hill 

For all that the weather was unpromising there were plenty of bees and butterflies about. Rather a lot to my surprise a painted lady was basking in the weak sun in the middle of the path. My efforts at tiptoeing past it didn't succeed and it flew onto some nearby brambles to resume its sunbathing.

Painted lady

Swallows and starlings dashed about overhead, the swallows new arrivals likely to be nesting in the stables below the hill, the starlings with mouths to feed in the nearby housing estate.

Dutton's Pond was very quiet indeed save for the mallards. The poor old duck had six drakes in attendance. There's always someone worse off than yourself.

The songscape resumed as I walked down to Jack Lane though actually seeing any of the singers in the trees on the railway embankment was a lot easier said than done. The absence of any blackbirds along this stretch was unusual.

Red campion

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

There were plenty of blackbirds on Jack Lane Nature Reserve. And reed warblers, three singing on one side of the path and one on the other. And for a change I saw a couple of them. None of them were singing by the nest sites I clocked last year, which is probably sensible: if I knew where they were so would the local magpies. I thought I was going to miss out on the Cetti's warbler but it was singing from the brambles next to the field at the edge of the reserve. There was a minutes' worth of duet as a sedge warbler joined in from somewhere close to the Cetti's and I muttered under my breath as my trying to record them coincided with the passage of the police helicopter overhead and the Cleethorpes train to my left. Still, it was good to hear them.

The spadgers which usually bounce in and out of the hawthorns along Jack Lane were keeping a very low profile while goldfinches sang in the trees. The fields were busy with woodpigeons, magpies, carrion crows and starlings and I could still hear the Cetti's warbler singing from the nature reserve as I walked into Town Gate.

I walked down Irlam Road to the Locks. The spadgers in the hedgerows along here were as boisterous as ever. The sand martins and swallows were busy hawking overhead, rarely settling on the telegraph wires and never for very long. There was a mass of chattering as a mixed flock of hirundines chased a sparrowhawk over the Ship Canal, a performance repeated a few minutes later when they decided a woodpigeon looked a bit iffy.

Manchester Ship Canal 
Back in the day a ferry would shuttle from the pier I'm standing on to the one opposite.

Great crested grebes

A lone mute swan cruised on the canal, there weren't many mallards about and no coots, gadwalls or tufted ducks. There were a bunch of great crested grebes mostly asleep upstream of the locks, a very noisy male grebe drifted to one side of the group and made rude noises at old men passing by. The common terns were also very noisy, with one pair getting to know each other on the lockside. There weren't many black-headed gulls about and even fewer pigeons. For a while the pigeons were outnumbered by the pair of stock doves flying past the stables.

Common terns and mallards

Looking downstream from the locks I could see a handful of immature cormorants drying their wings at the side of one of the basins. Adults were flying over three at a time and all seemed headed for Woolston Eyes. A few mallards and grebes drifted on the water and a heron stalked the bank.

Irlam Locks 

As I walked back down Irlam Road the martins congregated on the telegraph wires after mobbing a passing herring gull, an oystercatcher made a racket as it flew up the canal and a whitethroat sang from one of the hawthorns. I got to the bus terminus as the 256 pulled in. I'd expected a bit of a gentle potter about but it turned out to be a very productive afternoon's birdwatching.

Sand martins savouring their victory over a herring gull