Rixton

Corn bunting 
The "tooth" in the upper mandible and the notch in the lower (obscured by his tongue) are used for cracking open large seeds. I've no idea what he did to his tail.

It was another lovely day. After spending all of the first three-quarters of the month bitching about the dull, cool, windy weather I am not to be moaning about the onset of Summer. I had not the energy for a day out and decided I'd have a go at looking for quails locally. Over the past week they've been reported singing in the mosslands, with reports of a couple just outside Rixton nearly every other day. That area's been on my to-do list for a very long time so after I'd renewed my monthly travel card I got the train over to Glazebrook and set off for a walk.

After a cloudy start it became a brilliantly sunny day but not as oppressively hot as it has been. Blackbirds and a collared dove sang as the station. Dunnocks, goldfinches, chiffchaffs, robins and wrens joined in from the gardens as I walked down the road and great tits fidgeted through the hedgerows. Butterflies were out in numbers: large whites, orange tips, small whites and painted ladies fluttering about the gardens and roadsides.

By Dam Head Lane

I turned onto Dam Head Lane for the meandering walk into Rixton. There were songs in the hedgerows but it was mostly quiet in the fields. A few woodpigeons and carrion crows passed by, a pair of swifts swooped low over the barley and a couple of skylarks sang. Every so often a call from a pheasant or the sudden emergence and just as sudden disappearance of linnets, goldfinches or blackbirds hinted at the activity hidden underneath all those ripening ears.

Dam Head Lane 

I was heading for Moss Side Lane so instead of carrying on down Dam Lane into Hollins Green I took the footpath heading across the fields. From hereon in it was a new walk for me and I was interested how it would work out. It had been a lovely walk but quiet birdwatching so far and I was wondering if it was going to be more of the same.

The footpath across the fields

Walking across open fields of corn and barley was inevitably going to be a bit quiet for birdwatching. Goldfinches, linnets and skylarks hinted at their presence rather than presented themselves. Contact calls from the depths, small figures disappearing from the tractor wheel wide gaps on my approach, that sort of thing. Blackbirds and blackcaps sang from the trees in the village and a buzzard lazily floated over that way. Oddly, although it felt like dead flat walking i could see that the horizon dipped and fell gently as I progressed, as if the ghosts of the undulations of the drumlins left behind by the Ice Age had survived generations of ploughing of the land.

I had to tiptoe round painted lady butterflies sunning themselves on the path. There were dozens of them. Most were faded and slightly tattered, some very ragged and quite a few almost creamy white. Every so often a fresh, bright salmon-orange individual would flitter past and I'd have to look twice to be sure I wasn't missing something. As I crossed the little bridge over a land drain I spotted a large red damselfly in the brooklime lining the drain. A little further on a Southern hawker zipped past. It feels like the hawker dragonflies are very early this year but that's probably just because I had the first half of May without any dragonflies whatever.

The tree is by the bridge over the land drain

I got to Moss Side Lane and walked up past the brickworks. The trees and gardens were filled with song and the blue tits had hungry youngsters buzzing about them as they worked their way through the trees. Common blue damselflies zipped about the trees by the roadside pools a little way past the houses.

I was heading for Woodend Lane which runs between Moss Side Lane and Holly Bush Lane, the stretch where the quails had been reported singing. This lane runs parallel to the train line and Manchester Road and is about the same distance from both. It's the open mosslands hidden from the railway by the big mound at the landfill site at the end of Moss Side Lane and hidden from the road by houses and Rixton Clay pits so it was a new landscape to me.

Woodend Lane 

It was only a short walk to Woodend Lane. I had a nice surprise when I got there: there was a cuckoo calling from somewhere over by the landfill site. I'd quite given up on cuckoos for this year. The first stretch of the lane was bounded by tall hedges. Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, wrens and chaffinches sang while families of blue tits and great tits bustled by. Just past the farmhouses the landscape suddenly opened up completely and the game changed. A lot.

Lapwing chick

There seemed to be more painted ladies than gravel on the lane. This didn't distract from the swifts overhead, the woodpigeons and carrion crows foraging in the field North of the lane or the lapwings in the ploughed field to the South making sure that my attention was directed at them in their half of the field while their youngsters pottered about in the other. 

Painted lady

The scene was filled with the songs of skylarks and whitethroats. So much so that it was a while before I was picking up the third section in the songscape and more yet before I realised what I was hearing. I hadn't realised how infrequently I'm hearing corn buntings singing these days. One flew up to sing from the telegraph wires, dwarfing both the whitethroat and the goldfinch already sat there. It wasn't just a trick of perspective that it looked twice the size, it was half as big again and there's a lot more meat on a corn bunting. As I got closer I wondered what it had done to its tail, the ends were worn to ribbons.

Woodend Lane 

I walked along hearing skylarks, whitethroats and corn buntings, the occasional bit of twittering from goldfinches and a reed bunting singing from a far corner of the field margins but no quails. I didn't feel disappointed, it was an extremely pleasant walk and there was plenty much else about. More lapwings, woodpigeons, carrion crows and pheasants. More swifts. A lot more butterflies. A few black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs drifted to and from overhead the landfill site, it's not a promising site for scavenging but I suppose they have to check it out for form's sake. A buzzard floated about the trees by the railway line, a pair of buzzards over the trees by the road.

Approaching Holly Bush Lane 

I reached Holly Bush Lane and turned to walk down to Manchester Road for the bus back. I checked the times, the 100 to the Trafford Centre was due in fifty minutes and it was about twenty minutes' walk. I almost missed the bus.

Yellow wagtail
They wouldn't let me any closer

As I walked down I had a reminder of the scheme of things: pied wagtails fuss about barns, yellow wagtails barley and both on ploughed fields. A ploughed field littered with lapwings, carrion crows, wagtails and woodpigeons also had a family of mistle thrushes, the youngest having that peculiar mildewed effect of the plumage which breaks up the shape of a pale bird on dark soil surprisingly well. At a glance when they keep still they have a look of bits of debris or ploughed-up stones. I almost missed the meadow pipits in the corner.

Painted lady

The carpet of painted ladies was joined by red admirals. Yellow wagtails and corn buntings sang on the telegraph wires. I heard more corn buntings on this walk that I did all last year. 

Corn bunting 

Corn bunting 

Corn bunting 

I was trying to work out whether a pair of whitethroats had youngsters in a hawthorn bush when a hare ran across the road. It shot down a furrow in the ploughed field and I couldn't help thinking there should have been greyhounds in racing colours in pursuit.

Holly Bush Lane 

I was surprised to see a reed warbler fussing about the corner of a field near a farmstead. But then it's only a field away from the clay pits so it ought not to have been such a surprise. Greenfinches, blackbirds and a song thrush sang by the farmsteads and swallows joined the swifts over the trees. A family of great spotted woodpeckers made themselves known and razzed me as I passed. And a kestrel hovered over the corner of the field at the end of the lane. I'd barely arrived at the bus stop when the bus turned up.

The nature reserve at Rixton Claypits is on my to-do list. Today I'd walked right around without visiting it. This was definitely a walk I should do again. And I really have to get round to visiting the nature reserve.