Wellacre Country Park

Wellacre Country Park

After a weekend spent listening to the radio with a hot water bottle on my face and some very sleepless nights I thought a gentle toddle round Wellacre Country Park would be a sensible form of exercise. It was a dry, relatively mild and cloudy November afternoon, just right for a dawdle round.

Walking into Wellacre Wood
The young oak tree on the right was fizzing with long-tailed tits 

I got the 256 to Town's Gate and wandered into Wellacre Wood. Parakeets and magpies muttered in the treetops by the school. A large, and surprisingly silent, mixed tit flock bounced out of the hedgerows by the school into the young oaks at the fringe of the woodland. A couple of dozen long-tailed tits provided most of the energy with blue tits and coal tits fidgeting a fair contribution. Great tits were conspicuously absent for once. The chaffinches didn't seem to be part of the flock, they just coincided in passing. Robins sang around the woodland edge but the woodland interior was deathly quiet save the sound of falling leaves. It was the merest luck I caught the jay caching acorns, I stood still and let it finish the job and move on.

Some of the brambles were still game

Goldfinches and robins fussed about in the hawthorns by the path to Jack Lane. Magpies, pied wagtails and carrion crows accompanied the horses. There was a trickle of black-headed gulls overhead, nearly all heading for Salford Quays. Six cormorants flying in a line were heading for the Ship Canal at Irlam.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

It was lovely to see water back in Jack Lane Nature Reserve. There didn't seem to be anything taking advantage of it anywhere but it was nice to see. All the small bird action was going on along the railway embankment, a very sleek-looking male great spotted woodpecker was working his way through the half-drowned willows in the company of long-tailed tits, great tits and blue tits. I'd heard him a while before I saw him, I was looking too high: he was working on the wet wood at the base of the trees.

Heading for Dutton's Pond, the railway's on the right

Dutton's Pond 

Half a dozen mallards and a pair of moorhens pottered about Dutton's Pond but there wasn't any sign of the usual pair of coots. A bullfinch flew a circuit of the pond for no apparent reason while parakeets and a jay had a shouting match in the trees beyond.

I turned, crossed under the railway bridge and walked onto Green Hill. I couldn't be bothered with climbing the hill, I just followed the path over to Carrington Road. Robins, wrens, great tits and a dunnock fidgeted in the bushes by the wayside. Woodpigeons, goldfinches and chaffinches were settling in to roost in the treetops, greenfinches and a bullfinch flew over to the farmland on the Cheshire side of the river. The few lesser black-backs passing overhead looked to be heading for Woolston Eyes.

River Mersey at Flixton Bridge 

Long-tailed tits and great tits came over to have a look as I looked in vain for any birds on the river. I bade them good day and walked down for the bus home.