Wharfside

Black-headed gulls and yellow-legged gull 

The weather was more of the same. I wasn't convinced I could be bothered with it. In the back garden the great tits and blue tits chased the squirrel off the suet feeder and blackbirds were feasting on Pyracantha berries, having left the rowan berries to the magpies. There was no sign of house sparrows.

Lostock Park 

A wander round my local patch was devastatingly quiet, the woodpigeons and magpies are nearly back up to numbers but couldn't compensate for single counts (one of each) of great tit, robin and goldfinch. And the absence of anything else.

Magpie playing at being Barnacle Bill on the Ship Canal

I drifted over to Wharfside to see what was on the Ship Canal. Judging by the detritus flowing downstream there must have been a shipwreck up the Irwell, probably Doctor Syn and his minions mucking about with the dark lanterns on Trinity Way. In the changing light every shade of grey on the gulls was suspect, scudding clouds and random pokes of sunlight had them running up and down the Kodak grey scale like mice in a piano. Black-headed gulls could only be black-headed gulls, the herring gulls, particularly the subadult birds sometimes needed a second look. When I found the usual yellow-legged gull by Clipper Quay I persuaded myself it was a trick of the light and walked on. Walking back later it gave me a fighting chance by drifting ashore and walking thigh-deep into the shallows. As the water lapped about its legs and the light came and went the colour of the legs alternated between greyish brown and mustard yellow giving me more than ample opportunity to second-guess myself.

Black-headed gulls and yellow-legged gull 

Black-headed gulls, coots and yellow-legged gull 

Black-headed gulls, yellow-legged gull, moorhen and lesser black-backs 

Herring gulls and black-headed gulls 
The small-looking black-headed gull at the front was definitely a black-headed gull in the field but I had to look twice when I looked at the photo at home. For a moment I wondered if I'd missed a Bonaparte's gull. I hadn't, it's a black-headed gull. 

Mallards, coots, moorhens and mute swans pottered about. There was a conspicuous lack of Canada geese. The cormorants were mostly juveniles and all the ones I could be sure of were of the continental sinensis subspecies.

Cormorant, an adult
That square corner of the yellow gular patch is typical of sinensis.

Before I came out I put my big coat on against the wind. And forgot to put my cap in my pocket. I completed the walk back to the Imperial War Museum and decided I was bored of the rain and went home.