Irlam Moss

Lapwing

It was a thoroughly dreich day. So much so that I watched the cup final and though I was happy with the result I wasn't impressed by the football. I decided to go out for a walk in the rain.

Astley Road 
It doesn't look right, flat and level like a normal road.

I got the train the couple of stops to Irlam and had a walk up Astley Road and back down Roscoe Road just to see what was about. The songbirds were in full song, possibly in defiance of the vile weather. Blackbirds, robins and wrens did the heavy lifting supported by blackcaps, goldfinches, dunnocks, chaffinches and song thrushes. The local blackbird population is booming and those male blackbirds not busy getting beakfuls of worms from the fields were in full song atop the tall hawthorn bushes. There weren't enough large bushes to go round so some had to share. There weren't many chiffchaffs about until after I'd passed the Jack Russell's gate and a couple of whitethroats sang out in the field margins.

By Astley Road

The turf fields were littered with blackbirds, woodpigeons, starlings and song thrushes. Every field margin had at least one pair of pheasants and an unmown section of one field was a jostle of pheasants and woodpigeons.

It's a good year for butterburs with ginormous leaves

At the entrance to Prospect Grange I scanned the field by the motorway. A swarm of swallows hawked low over the treetops way over on the motorway embankment. I had the impression that there were some house martins in there but it took a while for a couple to fly in front of the trees and have the flash of white rumps confirm it.

Blackbird, goldfinch and greenfinch

I wandered back down Roscoe Road in the pouring rain. It was cold and wet but none of my joints ached, which didn't and doesn't make any sense to me but I'm not complaining about it. Overhead there was a steady passage of lesser black-backs heading to the roost on Woolston Eyes. Robins, dunnocks and blackbirds rummaged about on the roadside while more of them sang in the hedgerows. Lapwings stood about in the fields on their own or chased after jackdaws that had pushed their luck. Titmice and greenfinches flitted about, goldfinches twittered from treetops and telegraph poles, and a couple of meadow pipits called as they flew across the road between stubble fields.

Butterburs with even more ginormous leaves 

By Roscoe Road 

I'd been looking for grey partridges and finally found one, but not where I had been looking. I'd been scanning the fields margins and stubble fields. One of the turf fields had been stripped, leaving black, peaty soil behind it. And there out in the middle of it was a partridge. It was a juvenile bird, not quite full-sized, very streaky with straw yellow on brown and it stood out a mile against the black soil. Had it hunkered down the same way in the stubble field across the road I'd have struggled to see it.

Three oystercatchers flew low over the fields then skimmed the rooftops as they flew into the distance. I wondered where they'd been and where they were going.

Hawthorn 

I had a while to wait for the 100 to the Trafford Centre and the connection there with the bus home wasn't clever so I decided to do the weekly shop in Irlam and get the train home. Which turned out to be a mistake, timetables and cancellations being as they are. Luckily, thanks to the good offices of the guard on the train into Manchester and the platform manager at Oxford Road I only got home half an hour late. The timetable said it should have been three hours.