Irlam

Jackdaws, Irlam Moss

I caught up with my sleep. Or, more truly, sleep caught up with me. I woke up half an hour too late to set off on today's planned jaunt. I looked out at the vertical sheet of cold water that passed for Flaming June and decided I'd have half an hour's lie-in before getting up. Breakfast was by way of being a late lunch. I hadn't missed much: the spadgers and blue tits were huddled in the gooseberry bushes by the feeder when they weren't demolishing the last of the suet blocks. The male blackbird came and helped. Everything else was in deep cover out of the rain, even the school playing field was a woodpigeon-free zone.

Even the spadglings were fed up

The rain abated mid-afternoon and I got itchy feet. I decided to get the train into Irlam and have a walk up Astley Road and back down Roscoe Road just to get a bit of exercise. I was also hoping there might be some grey partridges about.

Astley Road
I keep reminding myself that we can't have all this green without the rain.

It wasn't raining as I walked up Astley Road but it was cool and damp and grey as February. This didn't stop the blackbirds, goldfinches and collared doves singing from the trees and rooftops. Blue tits and wrens churred, house sparrows fussed about in hedgerows, woodpigeons and lesser black-backs flew overhead and swifts hawked low over the chimney pots. Days like this are odd, had the rain been lighter it would have been a quiet afternoon but everything was trying to fit a day's activity into the window between downpours. As, indeed, was I.

Dozens of swifts hawked over the rough turf field on one side of the road while a couple of swallows hawked over the mown field on the other. Blackbirds and pied wagtails hunted on the mown grass, carrion crows and pheasants on the unmown. Blackbirds, goldfinches, blackcaps, robins and wrens sang in the wayside trees and bushes. Blue tits, chiffchaffs and dunnocks fidgeted through the foliage (sorry, once it came to mind I had to write it down) and chaffinches and greenfinches bustled about the treetops. Most of the song thrushes were busy hunting in the field margins but one started singing in a tree by the Jack Russell's gate and for some reason that set off the chiffchaffs and they weren't for shutting up until the thrush did.

A kestrel was hovering over the field by Prospect Grange. I got confused because it looked like the female as I walked up but looking over the field it was the male I was seeing. It was only when I turned the corner onto Roscoe Road that it became apparent that both the pair were on the hunt. And judging by how quickly they were coming back after flying off with field voles in their talons they have an active nest on the go.

Spear thistle

In the trees at the road junction a chaffinch and a whitethroat sang a baffling duet. Half a dozen herring gulls loafed on the field behind Worsley View. A couple of lapwings and a flock of jackdaws kept well away from them. The stubble fields looked deserted at first glance, subsequent glances found lapwings that might have been on nests and others just fussing about generally, starlings digging for leatherjackets, goldfinches and house sparrows picking aphids off cow parsley, and skylarks and meadow pipits fossicking about on the ground. A buzzard that had been circling over the motorway drifted over a little and put the jackdaws to flight.

House sparrows

The fields between Roscoe Road and Astley Road were busy with woodpigeons and pheasants. A single stock dove flew by, something that rarely happens in my experience, if I don't see a stock dove paired up I'm inclined to think I've misidentified a pigeon. I had no luck finding grey partridges but I'd been lucky with the weather.

I decided to push my luck. I walked down to Princes Park and joined the Irwell Old Course. There was a songscape of blackbirds, blackcaps, goldfinches, robins, song thrushes, chiffchaffs and wrens. Yet for all that it felt quiet. A few mallards pootled about on the water, there was a conspicuous absence of moorhens and coots.

I walked down to The Boat House, crossed Cadishead Way and walked through to Irlam Locks. Which was easier said that done with such a lush growth of brambles along the path. It reminded me that once the fruit's all ripened and picked I'm going to have to go through the back garden with a combine harvester. A goldcrest sang me on my way, which was sweet of it.

Irwell Old Course 

A couple of great crested grebes drifted upstream of the lock. Half a dozen mallards dozed on the lock in the company of an oystercatcher and a drake mandarin duck. I spotted the mandarin as I was walking across the lock gates. I struggled to find it from the Flixton side, it sort of merged into the rusty browns and flaked white paint of the old bollard behind it. It's wonderful how nature provides natural camouflage against industrial architecture. It was reassuring to see a couple of dozen pigeons about the lock gates and a few cormorants drying their wings on the superstructure. The grey wagtails were busy and probably had youngsters to feed. The sand martins definitely did, at least six nests were on the go. The most active nests were the one which had their entrance holes in the lockside mortar almost completely hidden by vegetation.

Irlam Locks

A few dozen magpies and a couple of black-headed gulls fussed about on the water treatment works. As I was checking them out a commotion broke out on the lock. The dozing oystercatcher had company, it had been joined by its mate and another pair. The two pairs of oystercatchers had a prolonged territorial dispute which displaced most of the mallards off the lock and into the water. They eventually quietened down and joined forces to try and get the rest of the mallards out of the way, too. Mallards can be as stubborn as mules, they sat right and the oystercatchers had to give it up as a bad job. It all seemed a lot of effort to no effect.

Oystercatchers and mallards

As I got to the corner and turned onto Irlam Road proper a common tern flew in and started flying around the lock. I keep wondering if they're going to nest on the locks here but they haven't yet to my knowledge.

I only had five minutes to wait for the bus home. It had been a very productive walk and a bit of luck well pushed.