Wellacre Country Park

Wellacre Country Park 

It was too nice a day for lolling about the house saying it's too nice a day not to play out in. I had a teatime wander round Wellacre Country Park to see what was about.

The pollen count was moderate. I've been a bit cocky with the hay fever this year, largely due to the long cool and windy spell earlier in the month. It's caught up with me on the coat-tails of the heatwave and I've noone to blame except myself for not taking the necessary additional precautions for walking past people mowing lawns and landscapes full of flowering grass. Today I felt like somebody had cut all the strings.

For most of the day I contented myself with watching the blue tits and butterflies elbowing each other off the Pyracantha blossom. The spadgers are making a great deal about my not filling the feeders with seed, as per the advice from the RSPB this year, but it's not stopping them quietly demolishing the fat balls. And there were times when I couldn't hear the radio for the wren and the blackcap, they both having parked themselves in the boysenberries by the living room window. 

I don't usually get dragonflies in the garden before Midsummer and they're usually common darters. And I rarely get brown hawkers this side of August Bank Holiday so it was a surprise to see one patrolling the tops of the dog rose.

The magpie moths have suddenly emerged in the front garden.

Wellacre Wood 

The rooks of Town Gate were raucous. It sounded like the youngsters had vacated the rookery but only as far as the trees across the road. Blackbirds, woodpigeons and wrens sang as I approached Wellacre Wood where they were joined by chiffchaffs, robins and goldfinches. Speckled woods fluttered about the woodland edges, the currently almost inevitable painted ladies sunned themselves out in the open. The depths of the wood, usually quiet, was noisy with the songs of blackcaps, robins and a song thrush.

I walked past the fields to Jack Lane. A ring-necked parakeet screeched overhead as it flew to the roost by the school. Parakeets seem to roost by the clock rather than by sunlight, except in the depths of Winter when they barely get out of bed at all. Carrion crows and woodpigeons rummaged about in the fields, robins and goldfinches sang from the hawthorns and a chiffchaff sang from a tree on the margins.

Wellacre Country Park 

The spadgers fussing about in the hedgerows of Jack Lane were joined by a singing whitethroat trying to make itself heard over the barker's p.a. announcements at the funfair over in Irlam. I looked across the fields to the locks where small groups of sand martins swirled about and starlings shuttled between the water treatment works and the housing estate.

The Cetti's warbler on Jack Lane Nature Reserve made itself heard over the funfair but the reed warblers, reed buntings and even a blackcap struggled. The water rail had no trouble at all. The coots and moorhens kept to the pools deep in the reedbeds; the moorhens had chicks, the coots might have but I wasn't sure.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

There were plenty of pond skaters, whirligig beetles and biting midges on the pool by the path but no signs of any tadpoles. I hadn't realised how long I'd been quietly standing there until a couple of reed warblers emerged from the reeds, stopped suddenly in their tracks, uttered notes of surprise and shot back into the reeds. A long-tailed tit flew over to the tree beside me to tell me it was time I should be moving on.

Walking to Dutton's Pond 

The black-headed gulls were starting to head to the Salford Quays roost as I walked over to Dutton's Pond. Just ones and twos this time of day, an hour or so later they'd be a dozen at a time. The blue tits near the pond had noisy youngsters wanting feeding. The anglers were making the most of a pleasant Saturday teatime so the mallards and moorhens loafed quietly in the cover of the flag irises.

The walk through the reeds and tall grasses of the nature reserve caught up with me. I'd taken the precaution of greasing my nostrils and upper lip so I had only a slightly runny nose but I had to give my eyes a quick swill using the water bottle top as an impromptu eye bath. Which served well enough until I got home and could do it properly.

Green Hill 

Given the itchiness I wondered whether I should walk up Green Hill at all. In the end I did but I was careful to stick to the well-trodden paths. The great tits by the railway line had youngsters. Given how quiet and furtive they were I suspect at least two pairs of whitethroats had active nests. Overhead the jackdaws started making tracks for their roosts and swallows and swifts hawked low over the top of the hill, with more swallows down by the stables. I was probably a couple of hours early for the barn owls I keep being told about.

River Mersey 

Blackbirds, great tits, robins, wrens, woodpigeons and goldfinches sang by the river. I stood on the bridge and watched downstream as a swarm of swifts and sand martins hawked over the river. There's less tree cover upstream of the bridge so only a handful of sand martins were up that way. A couple of drake mallards were the only birds I could see on the river.

I walked into Flixton where I had twenty minutes to wait for my train, which turned out to be one of the few ones running to schedule without incident today, a nice change. Blackbirds, dunnocks, a robin and a song thrush serenaded the passengers on the other side waiting for a Liverpool train delayed until the Second Coming. The bullfinch wheezily joining in for a couple of minutes was unexpected. A couple of blackbirds dueled at Humphrey Park and three swifts screamed overhead. The blackcap and the robin sang me over the doorstep. I was ready for a pot of tea.

Wellacre Country Park