Wellacre Country Park

Walking up Green Hill 

We're in the between times of birdwatching where the Summer visitors have moved on, most of the Winter visitors have yet to arrive and the residents have no particular need to call attention to themselves. The spectacle of scarce and rare passage migrants popping up in odd places tends to distract from that everyday reality. Early Autumn is a time where you have to work hard to see familiar faces while you're on the q.v. for absolutely anything to turn up. A case in point: the only house sparrows I saw all day were a couple in the back garden first thing.

It was one of those days where you could see a change of seasons by turning your head, accompanied by a chilly Northwest wind. I decided I'd have that look around Wellacre Country Park I didn't do yesterday.

Parakeets screeched in the trees by the school while carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks called as they passed overhead. Magpies rummaged in the leaf litter and beech mast along Irlam Road and blackbirds rummaged in the undergrowth as I walked down the path into Wellacre Wood. I was sensing robins and great tits more often than I was hearing or seeing them and a singing wren was a comforting bit of solid reality.

Wellacre Country Park 

Swarms of sand martins and swallows were a half-remembered fantasy of another age a month ago. Carrion crows, magpies and woodpigeons thinly peppered the fields. Looking over towards Irlam Locks I could see a few black-headed gulls and pigeons, mallards called and a couple of pied wagtails flew in and joined the grazing horses.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

For the most part Jack Lane was tantalisingly quiet. Moorhens muttered softly in the reeds, great tits and robins quietly ticked in bushes, blackbirds and wrens slid silently into brambles. I relaxed and let myself be alert to the slightest noise and caught a couple of goldfinches moving through the treetops and a family of long-tailed tits bustling through hawthorn bushes. Then a Cetti's warbler erupted into song ten yards away in the reedbed. The long-tailed tits came over for a closer look at the jumping man.

A month ago this was a shallow pool

I was remarking to myself how dry the reedbeds were, just damp mud, when the clouds parted, the sun shone and it started raining. I have this gift.

Dutton's Pond 

Dutton's Pond looked picturesque, a moorhen and a pair of mallards pottered about.

As I walked up onto Green Hill and back down towards Carrington Road I was struck that nearly all the birdlife was passing by: carrion crows, jackdaws, magpies, woodpigeons and jays, even a chaffinch, were just passing by. Robins sang in the trees by the railway.

Green Hill 

A pair of mallards swam downstream on the Mersey as I walked into Flixton. I checked the time and struck lucky, I got the train home.