Mosses

Juvenile long-tailed tits

It was a mild, grey day. Swift numbers locally have been a bit underwhelming so it was nice to see twenty-one of them hawking low over the school playing field. The first black-headed gulls were back from their breeding grounds, a sign of high Summer.

Cutnook Lane by the motorway bridge

I decided to have a wander over the Salford mosses, getting the 100 from the Trafford Centre and getting off at Cutnook Lane. I was barely over the motorway bridge when I bumped into my first mixed tit flock of the season. A pair of great tits and their youngsters bounced through the trees in the company of a blackcap and a family of long-tailed tits. A wood mouse hopped across the road while I was watching them.

Cutnook Lane 

It was rather quieter for the rest of the length of Cutnook Lane. The woodpigeons and magpies were away on the fields. A few blue tits, wrens and robins fidgeted through the hedgerows. Chiffchaffs, blackbirds, dunnocks and more wrens sang in the trees and hedgerows but only sporadically, we're approaching the quiet times of the post-breeding moult. A couple of swallows passed overhead, a buzzard floated towards Barton Moss. As I approached the junction with Twelve Yards Road willow warblers joined the chiffchaffs and a whitethroat sang in the hawthorn on the corner.

Walking up to Croxden's Moss 

I crossed the road and carried on walking North. Blackbirds, blackcaps and willow warblers sang, robins were shy and skulked in the undergrowth. Blue tits, long-tailed tits and goldfinches bounced through the trees. A pair of coal tits bustled through, the male stopping to sing at me before hurrying after his mate. The parents and adult helpers in one long-tailed tit family were busy hunting in the birches intergrowing with a stand of Scots pines, returning every so often to feed their very young fluffy lollipops sitting bewildered in the top of a Rhododendron, almost certainly fresh from the nest.

Juvenile long-tailed tits

I had a quick look over Croxden's Moss. The weather's suited the birch scrub on the open moss, there wasn't much bare peat to be seen. Carrion crows were heard but could not be seen. 

I took the usual path parallel to Twelve Yards Road, accompanied by singing willow warblers nearly all the way. Every so often a reed bunting, a wren, a blackbird or a blackcap would join in. A couple of little egrets fossicked about one of the pools behind the trees while a few lapwings loafed and preened nearby. The mild and muggy weather brought out the meadow browns and speckled woods but the only dragonflies were a couple of common blue damselflies. The weather also brought out the horseflies but I got away without being bitten. My usual sun block seems to attract horseflies, after getting burnt in Wales I've changed to a higher factor one and it doesn't seem to have the same effect, a double win for me.

Brambles
This starry flowered form is one of the dominant varieties in the area.

I broke cover from the trees as a kestrel hovered low over the field by the path. It shifted position then decided I wasn't anything to worry about and got back to its business. Whitethroats sang in the hawthorns at the field margins, skylarks sang in the fields and woodpigeons clattered about all over the place. Typical English countryside noises.

Lavender Lane 

It started to rain. I was midway to anywhere so I carried on walking. The rain stopped when I got to Lavender Lane and it was replaced by sweaty armpit weather. A yellowhammer singing from the top of one of the trees at Four Lanes End was a welcome sight, I'd nigh on given up on them here.

Yellowhammer 

Blackbirds, whitethroats, wrens and skylarks sang. Somewhere to the South a curlew was calling but I couldn't see it. A family of young wrens bundled about the roots of a drainside hawthorn like a barrel load of monkeys. On the field a family of lapwings included two nearly full grown youngsters. Both of the pair of stonechats were very busy, almost too busy to stop and churr me on my way as I passed by. I had to look twice at the male, he was almost black. I don't recall his being that dark before, perhaps he's started to moult and he has black skin under his feathers like titmice do.

Stonechat

Large red damselfly 

I decided I was going to walk through Little Woolden Moss and over to Glazebury. Partly because I didn't want to walk down Astley Road during the school run, partly because I was hoping to see yellow wagtails. Little Woolden Moss was in one of its quieter moods, or would have been if a couple of dozen willow warblers hadn't been in song. Lapwings, black-headed gulls and an oystercatcher fussed about on the pools. Meadow pipits skittered about the heather and birch scrub, a couple sang and one of these performed a parachute song, rising above the bushes and slowing spiralling back down into cover. 

Little Woolden Moss 

Common blue damselflies, large red damselflies and red admirals flitted about the pathside bracken and my first large skippers of the year fluttered about the low brambles. Despite the muggy weather there was a distinct lack of swifts or hirundines. Which was a pity because there were plenty of horseflies and mosquitos for them to be having to eat. I got away with only being bitten a couple of times, both times the last meal of a large bloodthirsty clegg.

Cotton grass 

Barley

The barley fields were ripening. Linnets, reed buntings and skylarks were heard far more often than they were seen, occasionally breaking cover to fly between fields. As did the only yellow wagtail I got to see today, a female that disappeared into the depths of the barley stalks in less than the blink of an eye. Any hopes of seeing a Channel wagtail in the mix today were disappointed. (Channel wagtail is the name used for males showing signs of both the continental blue-headed subspecies and our yellow wagtail in their ancestry, typically they have a lavender blue head. One's reported from here every year.)

Small tortoiseshell 

Most of the butterflies along the wayside were red admirals and small tortoiseshells, there were a few peacocks and a couple of painted ladies. Greenfinches, chaffinches and linnets joined the songscape. Sand martins buzzed about high above the bridge over the River Glaze but the house martins usually found over the fields by The Raven and Fowley Common Road weren't anywhere to be seen.

By Moss Road 

I didn't have long to wait for the bus to Birchwood where I got the train home. It had been one of those walks where there was a lot about but nowhere did it feels busy with birds. They don't all have to be crowd scenes.