Longendale Trail

Wren

It was another bright, if cool, Spring day and I felt disinclined to do anything with it. After getting the morning errands done I spent the next couple of hours maunging round the house and garden reviewing the status of Things To Be Done, with no intention of doing anything about any of them except beat myself about the head for having not done them, I decided that I really should get out, get some fresh air and get my head in a better place. I didn't want a route march or anything giving me the opportunity to give myself a good nagging so I got the trains for a walk up and down the stretch of the Longendale Trail between Hadfield Station and the bench above Valehouse Reservoir, which is both undemanding and picturesque and offers that kind of birdwatching which offers it to you on a plate but only if your head's not too busy to notice.

Joining the Longendale Trail 

Walking down the cutting at the start of the trail the trees and the pathside were busy with robins and blackbirds, many of which barely moved by to allow the passage of dogs and walkers. Chaffinches, chiffchaffs, dunnocks and wrens sang from the trees by the trail and somewhere in the background a song thrush was yelling its lungs out. Magpies and woodpigeons clambered about in the canopies, starlings and jackdaws ferried food from fields to rooftops, and the rustlings about in bushes were blue tits, goldfinches and house sparrows. It was that full-on Springtime experience where the snapshot is empty greenery and the movie a crowd scene.

Blackcaps and great tits joined the songscape and some of the robins decided they'd best get a song or two in, in between scowling at passersby for disturbing a rummage. As I approached the end of the cuttings and more open country willow warblers and greenfinches joined the chorus.

Bottoms Reservoir 

Rabbit

The fields above Bottoms Reservoir were peppered with jackdaws and starlings, and a flock of Canada geese grazed at one end. A handful of rooks pottered about between the gamboling lambs. I was surprised to find a couple of siskins in the treetops. Titmice bounced through the hawthorn hedgerows, a pair of long-tailed tits found a magpie and gave it a damned good mobbing until it got fed up and went to join the jackdaws. And as ever the trackside rabbits paid little heed to passersby unless their dogs were off the lead.

Long-tailed tit

Long-tailed tit

Stitchwort

The hathorn hedges sounded busy

I couldn't see the lapwings and pheasants calling from the hillside or the curlew and oystercatchers somewhere in the valley. I did spot the passing swallows. A whitethroat quietly disappeared into the hawthorn it had been singing from. I always expect more whitethroats than I find along here. Despite the cool weather a green-veined white fluttered about the trackside cowslips.

The Longendale Trail 

I sat down and listened to a coal tit and a dunnock trying to out-sing a wren and a blackbird while blue tits bounced about in the tree next to the bench. A couple of black-headed gulls flew down the valley towards Bottoms Reservoir. I'd bought myself a quarter of midget gems from the shop by the station so I could give myself a reward for getting to my destination but somebody had eaten them along the way. It didn't matter, it was all very pleasant anyway.

Destination sit-down

On the walk back most of the Canada geese had moved down onto Bottoms Reservoir to join the mallards and moorhens already pottering about down there. The songscape ran on unabated, I'm taking them in while I can, it's going to be a devil of a job finding any of the birds when it all goes quiet for the post-breeding moult.

Chaffinch

I'd dawdled a bit and had had to wait a couple of minutes while a couple of blackbirds finished their punch-up on the path but I still managed to get the train back to Manchester, just, and headed off home with the demons back in their boxes for a bit.

Cowslips