A walk along the Irwell

Canada geese and cormorant 

The young blue tits in the back garden are gaining in confidence, a couple are striking out on their own. The usual pattern is that after a few weeks at least one will start tagging along with a troupe of spadgers and that'll see them through the Winter. The robin had the first hour of the dawn chorus to itself then kept quiet most the rest of the morning. The blackbird was unusually late and kept singing on and off throughout lunchtime. The reason for the latter turned out to be an interloper, a male who stationed himself on the garden fence whenever he wasn't provocatively hunting for worms on next door's lawn. Even the female blackbird came out to protest about that.

It was another sunshine and showers day. I played bus station bingo at the Trafford Centre and got off the 52 at Kersal Wetlands.

It became a sunny afternoon. Sand martins hawked and swooped low over the river. A few drake mallards dabbled about the far bank, a pastoral idyll ruined when one hapless drake evidently said or did the wrong thing and was gang-raped by the others. Mallards are not gentle lovers at the best of times but even so I was rather shocked by this. Not as much as the victim, which spent the next five minutes rearranging its plumage before joining the others who were pottering about as if nothing had happened. It's never a good idea to look too hard at mallards in the breeding season.

Kersal Wetlands 

Blackbirds, wrens and robins were doing the bulk of the singing in the hedgerows by the houses with assists from robins, blackcaps and goldfinches. I got out into the open, looked at the sweeping flowering meadows, thought of hayfever and decided to have a walk amongst the trees on the riverbank. But not before I'd noticed there were some early purple orchids about.

Early purple orchid

River Irwell

The walk along the riverbank was full of dramatic lighting effects, the songs of blackbirds, chiffchaffs, robins, chaffinches and song thrushes filled the air and were punctuated by the raucous calls of gangs of carrion crows and ring-necked parakeets. On the river pairs of tufted ducks and mallards were rather a lot more decorously behaved than the hooligans downstream. Half a dozen Canada geese cruised lazily upstream past a loafing cormorant. A couple more cormorants flew overhead. Jackdaws fussed in the trees on the far bank and woodpigeons clattered about in treetops.

Walking by the riverbank 

The titmice were in stealth mode, and no wonder as the blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits all had youngsters in tow and the magpies were out in force.

Grey wagtail 
I'll not win any prizes with it but I'm glad I got a photo of this bird flycatching.

I checked out the shoals and shingles on the bends of the river looking for grey wagtails and soon found a family of them. One was using a mid-stream rock as a launching pad for flycatching sallies and had a pretty impressive strike rate, nearly every time it came back with an insect in its beak. A mayfly and, I think, an alder fly were amongst the bag.

One of the shingle beaches on the river

It had become warm and sunny, as long as you were out of the cool breeze, and the butterflies came out to play. Large whites and orange-tips fluttered about the sweet rocket on the bank, peacocks and speckled woods amongst the nettles and rank grass between the trees. Give it a month or so and this will all be invisible behind pink masses of Himalayan balsam. I noticed that every giant hogweed along the bank had been doused generously with weedkiller.

Spot the parakeet
If ring-necked parakeets could Keep quiet for longer than half a second they'd be impossible to find.

Ring-necked parakeet

Giddy with swarms of sand martins and grey wagtails bouncing along the far bank I found myself actively looking for dippers and kingfishers. I'm old enough to remember the Irwell being declared biologically dead. How times change. I didn't find any dippers or kingfishers, though. 

Walking by the river

As the river turned its sharpest bend willow warblers sang in the sallows and white poplars. I don't know why this is the point where they take over from the chiffchaffs, there were chiffchaffs singing from the woods on the opposite bank. The path is roped off here as the trees have adopted perilous angles in an effort to race the bank into the river. I could have ducked under the rope and carried on but I didn't want it to be this week that is be crushed by a tree. I headed inland and up the bank to the circular walk around the wetlands.

Kersal Wetlands, Manchester city centre in the background 

Down in the lake pairs of coots fed unlovely bald and gawky chicks, quietly steering them away from any herons that were lurking about on the islands. Canada geese and their goslings, similarly, preferred the company of people to the herons. I found just the one dabchick and I was frankly surprised to see that one out in the open this time of year.

Looking downstream from the bridge, including Canada geese 

I walked round to the bridge over to Kersal Dale. I'd have liked to have carried on walking upstream but the riverside paths peter out here for a stretch and I wasn't in the mood for working my way round to the back of Salford Sports Village and Agecroft Cemetery. I'd be better off picking up the 66 from Eccles sometime and picking up the walk from Drinkwater Park. Much better, then, to cross over and walk back downstream through Kersal Dale.

Kersal Dale 

Community blue damselfly 

Blackbirds, blackcaps, chiffchaffs, robins, chaffinches and a song thrush made themselves heard over parakeets, crows and magpies. A treecreeper quietly told me to move along as I paused by its tree to take photos of common blue damselflies. A little further along the Himalayan balsams were alive with banded demoiselles. 

Female banded damselfly 

The male damselflies were keeping a low profile when they weren't chasing the ladies.

Swifts hawked high over the meadows, sand martins hawked low over the river. I reached a bench at a bend and sat down to scan over the shingles on the river, jocularly reminding myself I was looking for dippers and kingfishers. Mallards drifted downstream. Grey wagtails and robins flitted about. Blackbirds came down for a drink and song thrushes chased each other over the river. A kingfisher flew upstream. I didn't have time to grab my camera and it would have been a lousy photo anyway so I just enjoyed the moment as it flew by and shot upstream.

River Irwell 

I forget that on this side of the river the banks are steep and ofttimes muddy. Wrens and blackbirds churred me on my way and a family of great tits blew raspberries as I passed them along one of the several flights of steps. My knees and wind both needed the exercise after a fairly lazy week and both had a grumble about it.

Kersal Dale 

I got up to Bury New Road, looked at the time and decided to head off home, getting the bus into Manchester. Given its urban setting I'm always surprised how productive this walk is. I should know by now.