Rixton Claypits

Rixton 

It's being a difficult birdwatching month. July itself is always difficult, the lassitude caused by heat and hayfever and the skulking nature of birds in post-breeding moult make it a time for appreciating insects and landscapes, but this year it's being particularly unproductive. Most years I've got that monthly hundred target in the middle of the third week, I'm still only on 96 so far and the total number of records is about three-quarters the norm. I'm getting out and about as much as any other July and there's lots I'm not seeing because it's just not there. Visiting wetlands and having no sign of reed warblers or Cetti's warblers. An avocet-less visit to Marshside. A scarcity of blackcaps and whitethroats. A sudden disappearance of swifts. In lots of ways it feels like late August out there. I read that many songbirds don't seem to be having second or third broods this year because the land is parched and the usual supplies of insects have been out of synch with nesting, which would go a long way to explaining the famine. The problem personally is that I'm not seeing this as a challenge to rise to, I'm seeing it as a disincentive to bother. Brute bloody-mindedness will get me out and about in the end but it's hard work when there's other things eating up your bandwidth.

It was a cooler, grey morning. Yesterday's rain had freshened the air and the wind had calmed down, it seemed fair walking weather. I thought I'd catch up with a few places I hadn't visited yet this year so I pottered out at lunchtime, got the train into Oxford Road and found that everything going North had been cancelled. At that stage I was ready to throw the towel in and admit defeat, had there been a train home anytime soon I probably would have done. I couldn't be arsed trying to get across the city centre to Victoria and trying from there. If I had a more definite incentive to do it I might have, with only the vague intent to wander round and see what was about I had no appetite for negotiating the knock-on effects of the annual trammegedon. So I drifted back onto the stopping train to Liverpool that sails past my station, one of many stopping trains to Liverpool that sail past my station, and wondered where I was going.

I got off at Glazebrook and decided I was going for a walk round into Rixton and perhaps go and look for farmland birds and what have you. Cloudy though it was, it was nice walking weather, the exercise might improve my mood.

Dam Head Lane 

The sun poked its way through the clouds but the wind provided some relief. The rolling fields of grain along Dam Head Lane and Dam Lane had been harvested and dozens of pigeons and woodpigeons rummaged through the stubble with occasional family groups of carrion crows. I looked in vain for stock doves, gamebirds or buntings, a couple of goldfinches flew by, two swifts wheeled overhead and house sparrows chirped in the farmsteads.

Rixton 

I turned and crossed the field to Moss Side Lane, not noticing the rise and fall of the drumlin I was walking over unless I looked back and saw the changes on the open horizon. The hedgerows and houses on Moss Side Lane seem to mask the effect going forward. At last I spotted something that wasn't a pigeon or crow in the field. A pair of pheasants. Three swifts wheeled overhead.

Walking up Moss Side Lane past the brickworks I wondered where I was going. According to Google, Rixton Claypits were closed so I walked down Moat Lane to have a look at them.

Moat Lane 

A flooded claypit at the top of the lane behind locked gates had a couple of families of coots and a family of dabchicks. There wasn't much vegetation about, it looks like it was still being worked fairly recently.

Further down and across the road I found the entrance to Rixton Claypits. Perhaps it's a car park that was closed. The claypits are, effectively, large ponds surrounded by trees and covered in waterlilies. So I had a bit of an introductory nosy round.

Rixton Claypits 

Coots and mallards pottered about the pools. Common blue damselflies did a lethargic version of zipping about in the verges of the path and brown hawkers patrolled the tops of the bushes and reeds. Blue tits, great tits and chiffchaffs called quietly as they moved through the trees. A young robin squeaked from the depths of cover. A goldcrest caught my eye as it fidgeted about in a willow, the state of moult it was in had left it with a very pale grey, almost white, head. Every time I turned a corner I seemed to surprise a rabbit or a blackbird, every length straight beside the hedgerow was littered with speckled woods and gatekeepers, a small clearing full of rosebay and ragwort continued the excellent year for painted ladies.

Rixton Claypits 

I had an hour's potter about just to get a feeling for the place, it seems to have a lot going for it given how small the nature reserve is. I definitely need a repeat visit, this time getting the 100 to the bottom of Moat Lane and walking up rather than tagging it onto the end of a walk.

I walked down to the bottom of Moat Lane, past a field of rabbits and white farm geese, and struck lucky: the 100 is an hourly service and I only had ten minutes to wait for it. I struck lucky twice: I got off at Irlam Station and had five minutes to wait for the train home.