Pennington Flash

Herring gull

It waa a cool, damp sort of a day with the sun spending the morning offering tantalising glimpses like the worst of online scam advertising. I headed over to Pennington Flash to see what was about, with half a mind that I'd be having to duck into hides to dodge a few showers along the way.

The way the extensive roadworks are effecting bus services makes the connection with the 126 at the Trafford Centre more miss than hit lately so I got the 132 and changed at Sale Lane for the V1 to Leigh. The 588 to Plank Lane was sitting at the bus station and I decided it would be rude not to. This also meant that I could do a woodland walk and have a look at the grasslands of the rucks North of the flash along the way.

Walking in from Slag Lane 

Brown roll-rim

I think this is a false blusher

The mixed tit flock bouncing through the trees by the path from Slag Lane included long-tailed tits, blue tits and chiffchaffs but, curiously. no great tits. I couldn't work out if the willow warbler squeaking in a sallow was part of the flock or a bystander. The one in the willows at the edge of the rucks was definitely on its own, as were the chiffchaffs dotted about the willows on the bank of the flash. A raft of coots and a few mallards drifted about at this Eastern end of the flash.

Heather

There was green showing on the rucks after the recent rains

It was a bit late in the day to see much passage migration over the rucks but I hoped one or two birds might have stopped for a breather. Apparently not, it looked as if they had all taken advantage of the Northwest tail wind to speed them on their way. A couple of pairs of stock doves flew by. A family of carrion crows and half a dozen magpies rummaged about on the ground and a male kestrel hovered low overhead. I wondered if much eats wild carrot seed, if they do they're in for a banquet this year.

Pennington Flash 

I turned back to the flash where there were more rafts of coots. Great crested grebes congregated by the end of the spit and mute swans dabbled by the banks. It took a while to find any tufted ducks, they were all over on the West end of the flash. I looked in vain for any terns or little gulls, a couple of the latter passed through yesterday. Black-headed gulls chased to and fro, cormorants fished in a line and a raft of herring gulls and lesser black-backs out in the middle was accompanied by a juvenile great black-back. 

Now the grim, grey weather comes upon us it's time for me to be fourth- and fifth-guessing myself with the identification of young gulls. The huge juvenile great black-back was obvious enough and in principle the young herring gulls and lesser black-backs ought to pose no problem. Herring gulls being generally more blocky and lesser black-backs generally being more attenuated, with longer wings accounts for the majority of them. A dark and slim herring gull will have me doubting myself, similarly a stocky lesser black-back. The key difference that's useful to me is the tertial feathers, that bunch of feathers hiding the bases of the black primaries. If they're uniformly dark it's a lesser black-back, if not it's a herring gull. A textbook juvenile herring gull has barred tertials, real life gulls don't read textbooks and quite often it's just broken patterning of light on dark.

Migrant hawkers patrolled the paths, sometimes hunting in pairs. Chiffchaffs squeaked, wrens tutted, robins sang and along this stretch the mixed tit flocks included great tits.

At the Tom Edmondson Hide 

A quick look through the reeds at Ramsdales Hide Found me a lot of teal and a couple of drake shovelers still in eclipse plumage. A few pairs of gadwalls dabbled on the pool on the Tom Edmondson Hide as the rain started in earnest. 

The spit from the F.W.Horrocks Hide 

It's remarkable how much the flash has filled up so quickly after a couple of weeks of showers. The spit at the F.W.Horrocks Hide was a lot thinner than on my last visit. A crowd of lapwings at the end flew off towards the fields to the West, a few more sat at the water's edge and preened. Mallards, coots and gadwalls loafed near the hide, cormorants and herring gulls loafed out at the end of the spit.

Lapwing, coot, mallards and tufted ducks
The tuftie is doing that roll onto its back to scratch its belly thing that has me thinking "Lesser scaup?" in bad light.

The rain was persisting down. I decided to call it quits. The car park was crowded with black-headed gulls, mallards and Canada geese. One oystercatcher stood on a rock offshore, another rummaged for scraps under the trees.

Oystercatcher 

The tally had come to 48, which by any objective measure wasn't bad in the circumstances. A sparrowhawk circling over Wigan bus station and two swallows hurtling across a field in Smallbrook got me to the fifty mark and I felt better for no good reason whatsoever. It had been a good walk until the rain hit and there were plenty of birds about.