Mosses

Chat Moss 

It was a sunny and cloudy day, the wind having picked up again. I'm going to try not to use the word "quiet," or any of its synonyms, for the rest of this week. It might not be easy. I'd annoyed myself by spending all morning telling myself I should go for a walk but having no idea where to go so come lunchtime I got the train to Irlam and headed up Astley Road.

The house sparrows were notably absent in the hedgerows and the turf fields were entirely empty, no so much as a woodpigeon. A few woodpigeons were having the last of the hawthorn berries, an occasional lesser black-back or carrion crows flew over. The small birds were keeping quietly under cover out of the wind, except the long-tailed tits flitting across the road as they swapped hedgerows and a couple of blackbirds breaking cover as I walked past. A male kestrel glided over, letting the wind do all the work.

Astley Road

Turf fields looking deceptively empty

It was similar, at first, after I'd crossed the motorway. Woodpigeons, black-headed gulls and carrion crows passed by overhead. A couple of meadow pipits flew by. Sheep were grazing the turf by the motorway accompanied by a couple of carrion crows. Further on the turf fields looked empty until I found a couple of dozen pied wagtails and a flock of linnets in a corner near the road. A couple of dozen starlings fidgeted between the fields and the telegraph wires. And in the field behind there were about fifty black-headed gulls with a few herring gulls and lesser black-backs. It actually didn't look that many on the ground but a passing female-type marsh harrier put them all up. She headed over towards Twelve Yards Road.

Approaching Four Lanes End 

The road had been busy. I was standing in the verge just before Four Lanes End waiting for three cars and two vans to negotiate passing each other when I spotted a couple of mistle thrushes in one of the trees and a couple of cock pheasants squabbling in the field opposite. It was sunny enough for a common darter to be hunting in the cover of the hedgerow out of the wind. A wren came to tell me to beggar off.

I scanned the fields at Four Lanes End to see what was about and at first it was all woodpigeons. A couple of fields North of Lavender Lane jackdaws were getting restless, breaking the treeline as they circled about. A couple of carrion crows had the fidgets, too. Just as I'd decided the disturbance was probably some farming activity two buzzards rose up, circled low over the field then drifted off in separate directions. Buzzards aren't much of a threat to corvids but they still make them fidgety.

Chat Moss 

Milky cone cup

There were yet more woodpigeons as I walked down Twelve Yards Road. Great tits and robins ticked in the hedgerows and half a dozen goldfinches flew past. A young kestrel headed over towards Lavender Lane. It wasn't that late in the afternoon but there was still the sound of small birds going to roost in the thickly planted willows in one of the fields. A little further on a couple of swallows flew low over the road, heading South. A migrant hawker patrolled the wayside. And family parties of long-tailed tits skipped between willows and hawthorn bushes along the way. I was keeping an optimistic eye out for barn owls, I found a hovering kestrel.

Kestrel

Twelve Yards Road 

Walking down Cutnook Lane the birdlife was hinted at more than seen. A blackbird muttering softly in deep bracken, contact calls of long-tailed tits, great tits and chaffinches, a dunnock somewhere in a bramble, goldfinches high in beech canopies, a mallard on the fishery. It came as a relief to find a flock of black-headed gulls in the paddocks by the motorway with pied wagtails and goldfinches flitting about the horses' hooves.

Cutnook Lane 

I had ten minutes to wait for the next 100 to the Trafford Centre where I bought a new pair of boots on my way home.