Salford Quays

Lesser black-backs and herring gulls

I didn't feel like doing anything today, my get up and go has been ghosting me all week. I'd read the same page of a book for the fifth time when I lost patience with myself and dragged myself out for a very dispiriting look around my local patch. 

Lostock Park 

The park was busy with people and quiet of birds. We've lost whitethroats as a breeding species after somebody tidied away the big bramble patches and drifts of thistles on the waste ground. There hasn't been the usual flocks of goldfinches and greenfinches either. The mass of goldenrod and willowherb that had taken over isn't anywhere near as productive and doesn't provide much cover. The brambles in the margins provide enough cover for dunnocks and wrens but not much else. I wasn't expecting any warblers today and didn't find any. And found precious little else.

• Black-headed gull 2 overhead
• Blackbird 2
• Blue tit 1
• Carrion crow 1
• Feral pigeon 1
• Goldfinch 1
• Herring gull 1 overhead
• Lesser black-back 3 overhead
• Magpie 3
• Woodpigeon 10
• Wren 1

I headed for Salford Quays to see what was about there. A flock of a dozen goldfinches fussed about in the trees by the bus stop as I waited for the 250 across to the other side of Trafford Park. (I could have walked it but it is a phenomenally dreary couple of miles of industrial estate road walking and the buses are every ten minutes.)

Clipper Quay
Coot, mallards, great crested grebe and moorhen

It was grey and cloudy and a keening wind blew straight down the Ship Canal. I walked over to Clipper Quay where black-headed gulls fussed about. A few coots, mallards and moorhens dozed and pottered about on the muddy bank. Rather to my surprise, they'd been joined by a great crested grebe dozing in their midst. I can't think when I last saw a great crested grebe hauling itself onto land except on a nest, I forget they can do it. 

Common gull

It was too early for the big roost of large gulls on Central Bay, there were just a couple of dozen or so loafing and preening, mostly lesser black-backs with a few herring gulls and a common gull. There were dozens of black-headed gulls and they were very active. When they weren't squabbling as they bathed they were squabbling over scraps of sticks they'd found on the water or they were a squabbling cloud hovering about mute swans and Canada geese mugging for scraps over in Ontario Bay, or they were chasing each other around the Lowry. In a turnaround from the usual state of affairs a black-headed gull chased a juvenile herring gull round the houses and forced it down onto the water.

Yellow-legged gull 

More herring gulls and lesser black-backs floated in, as did many more very noisy black-headed gulls. The usual adult yellow-legged gull took some finding as it was right out at the front of the raft of large gulls, and it was looking very spruce so I had no excuse. Yellow-legged gulls start and finish their moult earlier than the others. Over on the other side of the bay three house martins whizzed across the top of the water and towered up over the side railings.

Lesser black-backs and herring gulls 

Lesser black-backs 

The pied wagtails were gathering as I walked over to the War Museum, as were the United fans for the match. Luckily I was heading back in the wrong direction to get too embroiled in the traffic.