Stretford Meadows

Whitethroat

There have been times this week when the back garden has resembled a crèche. The blue tits, great tits and spadgers park the youngsters in the rowan tree and Pyracantha bush to fend for themselves for a bit, either catching their own insects or dropping down to the feeder and having a go at the suet blocks. After half an hour or so the parents check in, there's a bit of fussing about and the family moves on as a unit to reappear later when the parents want a rest. The first batch of young goldfinches arrived today. Ordinarily I'd have feeders full of sunflower seeds for them but the advice from all the bird charities is to not do so this year to try to curb the spread trichomonosis. They'll have to make do with dandelions and nipplewort gone to seed this Summer.

I decided I'd go orchid-hunting on Stretford Meadows. In part because I didn't want to miss them like I did the cuckoo pints in Cob Kiln Wood, in part because if I was specifically looking for orchids there'd probably be more birds about than usual. And so it came to pass.

(A quick confession here: I find the marsh orchids baffling, there's lots of variation and they hybridise like billy-o so my identifications are tentative. Having said that, there's no excuse for my misidentifying southern marsh orchids and thinking they were early purple orchids the other day. I've gone back and rectified the error in the blog post.)

Stretford Meadows 

A grey, gloomy and heavy sort of afternoon kept hinting at rain. The trees at the end of Newcroft Road were seething with birdsong. Even the house sparrows joined in. Blackbirds, dunnocks and wrens provided the bulk of the chorus with support from blackcaps and chiffchaffs. For once the robins were silent. Out on the meadows every substantial bramble patch and many of the hawthorn bushes had a singing whitethroat. Goldfinches and greenfinches gamboled about when they weren't singing from saplings, song thrushes duelled from young oak trees, reed buntings from stands of great willowherb, chiffchaffs and blackbirds from the trees by the cricket ground and dunnocks from the bits of willow scrub at the edges. Woodpigeons and magpies clattered about, parakeets screeched from the treetops, jackdaws and carrions crows flew overhead, a couple of swallows zipped by, a heron flew low across the corner by the stables, a couple of mallards low over the cricket pitch. It was the busiest I've seen here for ages.

Marsh thistle

Common vetch

Southern marsh orchid

And so I looked for orchids. The Southern marsh orchids were plentiful, though mostly poking through in the depths of grasses, willowherbs or goldenrod. Here and there I found what I think are early marsh orchids, the concrete cap on the municipal tip underneath all this dampish earth would probably provide the right conditions. Then there were a lot that were best described as "almost certainly Southern marsh orchids" with variations in markings and shapes of the lower lips of the flowers. Bafflement abounded.

?Southern marsh orchid

?Early marsh orchid

Southern marsh orchid

I went looking for twayblade up top, I've found them there a couple of times. Its probably a bit early but I thought this might be a good way of bumping into a singing lesser whitethroat. I had no luck in either case.

Incoming rain

A glance to the East saw a band of filthy weather heading this way, I decided not to walk headlong into it on my way into the Mersey Valley. There are plenty enough paths up top to be able to avoid retracing my footsteps on my way back to Newcroft Road. I bumped into more greenfinches, song thrushes and whitethroats. 

At this point I consoled myself that we can't have all this green without some rain.

The teeming rain, accompanied by bright sun and dramatic lighting effects, hit a hundred yards away from the car park. I'm not sure if the great spotted woodpecker in the trees was objecting violently to me or the rain. Rather than walking home in it I got the bus into Urmston, did a shop and got the train home.