Flixton

Common tern. Irlam Locks 

It was a hot, muggy sort of a day with enough breeze to stop it getting unduly unpleasant. I spent the whole morning wondering what I was going to do with it and was set for spending the afternoon the same way so I got my boots on and played bus stop bingo. The 256 arrived first so I walked down from the terminus at Town Gate for a look at Irlam Locks then wandered back for a walk round Wellacre Country Park.

As I waited for the bus a common darter zipped across the road. A Southern hawker passed the bus by Woodsend Circle. I took these as good omens but they were the only dragonflies I saw all day.

Dunnock

A swarm of sand martins and a handful of swallows were busy low over the fields by Irlam Road. House sparrows muttered in the hedgerows and both woodpigeons and collared doves sang from chimney pots. A dunnock bobbed up out of the brambles to have a better look at me, decided I was nothing to look at and bobbed back down again. Large whites, small whites, red admirals and painted ladies fluttered about the wayside.

Great crested grebes

A handful of mallards quietly loafed by the banks of the Ship Canal. Out on the water a pair of great crested grebes had a well-grown humbug that was fully capable of diving but not very good yet at catching anything that its mother hadn't caught first.

Mallard 

Great crested grebes 

Black-headed gulls 

There were at least fifty black-headed gulls loafing on the locks and more fussing about the water treatment works with the magpies and a grey wagtail. A couple of lesser black-backs and a herring gull accompanied the black-headed gulls and cormorants on the side of the main bay, a heron was with the crowd on the lockside. A few of the sand martins zipped down to the water for a drink or a quick wash. It's not easy to tell when they're moving so fast and have wet faces but there were a few juvenile birds in the swarms.

Black-headed gulls and heron

A sudden splash made me turn round. A common tern was plunge-diving into the canal just behind me. The finger-sized silver fish it was catching looked like dace but I'm open to being corrected.

Common tern

Looking downstream from the locks I could only see a couple of mallards by the banks, and two young cormorants and a juvenile heron on the end of the lock.

Irlam Locks 

I walked back into the housing estate and round onto Jack Lane. The hedgerows along Jack Lane were quiet, the sand martins and swallows zipping over them at head height weren't. The martins chipped and the swallows twittered and every so often a martin would notice there were people on the lane and would let forth with a lot of excited chatter. In amongst the excitement I almost missed the couple of swifts circling overhead.

Jack Lane 

I got into conversation with a lady walking her dog. She told me that the tawny owls on their farm have at least one owlet out of the nest, which is good to hear. So long as you're not a mouse.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve was very dry and very quiet. Goldfinches twittered and a juvenile robin had a few goes at singing a couple of phrases and a juvenile moorhen retreated from the bare mud  into the reeds.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

Dutton's Pond was wetter but visibly lower than usual. The young coots and moorhens were full-grown but still showing their juvenile colours.

There were a lot of holly blues in the bushes by Dutton's Pond and by the lane passing by Green Hill to Carrington Road. Blue tits, great tits and dunnocks fidgeted in the depths of the undergrowth while magpies and woodpigeons barged about in the trees.

Were it not for a house sparrow tweeting at the roadside and a woodpigeon singing in a tree I'd have seen no birds by the river at Flixton Bridge. The river's low but not so low as to preclude any waterbirds, it just wasn't my turn to see any.

Flixton Bridge 

I walked down to Flixton Station for the train home. A song thrush sang in the arrival of the train.