Irlam Moss

Lapwing

It was a thoroughly dreich day. So much so that I watched the cup final and though I was happy with the result I wasn't impressed by the football. I decided to go out for a walk in the rain.

Astley Road 
It doesn't look right, flat and level like a normal road.

I got the train the couple of stops to Irlam and had a walk up Astley Road and back down Roscoe Road just to see what was about. The songbirds were in full song, possibly in defiance of the vile weather. Blackbirds, robins and wrens did the heavy lifting supported by blackcaps, goldfinches, dunnocks, chaffinches and song thrushes. The local blackbird population is booming and those male blackbirds not busy getting beakfuls of worms from the fields were in full song atop the tall hawthorn bushes. There weren't enough large bushes to go round so some had to share. There weren't many chiffchaffs about until after I'd passed the Jack Russell's gate and a couple of whitethroats sang out in the field margins.

By Astley Road

The turf fields were littered with blackbirds, woodpigeons, starlings and song thrushes. Every field margin had at least one pair of pheasants and an unmown section of one field was a jostle of pheasants and woodpigeons.

It's a good year for butterburs with ginormous leaves

At the entrance to Prospect Grange I scanned the field by the motorway. A swarm of swallows hawked low over the treetops way over on the motorway embankment. I had the impression that there were some house martins in there but it took a while for a couple to fly in front of the trees and have the flash of white rumps confirm it.

Blackbird, goldfinch and greenfinch

I wandered back down Roscoe Road in the pouring rain. It was cold and wet but none of my joints ached, which didn't and doesn't make any sense to me but I'm not complaining about it. Overhead there was a steady passage of lesser black-backs heading to the roost on Woolston Eyes. Robins, dunnocks and blackbirds rummaged about on the roadside while more of them sang in the hedgerows. Lapwings stood about in the fields on their own or chased after jackdaws that had pushed their luck. Titmice and greenfinches flitted about, goldfinches twittered from treetops and telegraph poles, and a couple of meadow pipits called as they flew across the road between stubble fields.

Butterburs with even more ginormous leaves 

By Roscoe Road 

I'd been looking for grey partridges and finally found one, but not where I had been looking. I'd been scanning the fields margins and stubble fields. One of the turf fields had been stripped, leaving black, peaty soil behind it. And there out in the middle of it was a partridge. It was a juvenile bird, not quite full-sized, very streaky with straw yellow on brown and it stood out a mile against the black soil. Had it hunkered down the same way in the stubble field across the road I'd have struggled to see it.

Three oystercatchers flew low over the fields then skimmed the rooftops as they flew into the distance. I wondered where they'd been and where they were going.

Hawthorn 

I had a while to wait for the 100 to the Trafford Centre and the connection there with the bus home wasn't clever so I decided to do the weekly shop in Irlam and get the train home. Which turned out to be a mistake, timetables and cancellations being as they are. Luckily, thanks to the good offices of the guard on the train into Manchester and the platform manager at Oxford Road I only got home half an hour late. The timetable said it should have been three hours.

Flixton

Black-headed gull and common tern, Irlam Locks

It was a grey and gloomy sort of day with the sun making occasional weak attempts at glowing through the cloud. The wind was gentler and warmer than it had been and it would have been good walking weather if I could have summoned up the energy to get my act together. I couldn't so I settled for a longer than usual potter about Wellacre Country Park.

I got the train into Flixton and walked down to Flixton Bridge where a pair of drake mallards dozed on the river and the songs of blackbirds, robins, great tits and chiffchaffs battled to be heard over a song thrush in a sycamore tree.

Starting up Green Hill 

There was more of the same songscape as I walked onto Green Hill with blackcaps and wrens adding to the mix. As I walked up the hill whitethroats contented themselves with churring from bramble patches. Partway up I looked over the fields towards Flixton Road which were littered with woodpigeons, jackdaws and carrion crows. A couple of lapwings looked to have set up a territory and a pair of pheasants strutted along one of the field margins. Overhead a buzzard got a carrion crow and jackdaws escort over into Carrington.

Green Hill 

For all that the weather was unpromising there were plenty of bees and butterflies about. Rather a lot to my surprise a painted lady was basking in the weak sun in the middle of the path. My efforts at tiptoeing past it didn't succeed and it flew onto some nearby brambles to resume its sunbathing.

Painted lady

Swallows and starlings dashed about overhead, the swallows new arrivals likely to be nesting in the stables below the hill, the starlings with mouths to feed in the nearby housing estate.

Dutton's Pond was very quiet indeed save for the mallards. The poor old duck had six drakes in attendance. There's always someone worse off than yourself.

The songscape resumed as I walked down to Jack Lane though actually seeing any of the singers in the trees on the railway embankment was a lot easier said than done. The absence of any blackbirds along this stretch was unusual.

Red campion

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

There were plenty of blackbirds on Jack Lane Nature Reserve. And reed warblers, three singing on one side of the path and one on the other. And for a change I saw a couple of them. None of them were singing by the nest sites I clocked last year, which is probably sensible: if I knew where they were so would the local magpies. I thought I was going to miss out on the Cetti's warbler but it was singing from the brambles next to the field at the edge of the reserve. There was a minutes' worth of duet as a sedge warbler joined in from somewhere close to the Cetti's and I muttered under my breath as my trying to record them coincided with the passage of the police helicopter overhead and the Cleethorpes train to my left. Still, it was good to hear them.

The spadgers which usually bounce in and out of the hawthorns along Jack Lane were keeping a very low profile while goldfinches sang in the trees. The fields were busy with woodpigeons, magpies, carrion crows and starlings and I could still hear the Cetti's warbler singing from the nature reserve as I walked into Town Gate.

I walked down Irlam Road to the Locks. The spadgers in the hedgerows along here were as boisterous as ever. The sand martins and swallows were busy hawking overhead, rarely settling on the telegraph wires and never for very long. There was a mass of chattering as a mixed flock of hirundines chased a sparrowhawk over the Ship Canal, a performance repeated a few minutes later when they decided a woodpigeon looked a bit iffy.

Manchester Ship Canal 
Back in the day a ferry would shuttle from the pier I'm standing on to the one opposite.

Great crested grebes

A lone mute swan cruised on the canal, there weren't many mallards about and no coots, gadwalls or tufted ducks. There were a bunch of great crested grebes mostly asleep upstream of the locks, a very noisy male grebe drifted to one side of the group and made rude noises at old men passing by. The common terns were also very noisy, with one pair getting to know each other on the lockside. There weren't many black-headed gulls about and even fewer pigeons. For a while the pigeons were outnumbered by the pair of stock doves flying past the stables.

Common terns and mallards

Looking downstream from the locks I could see a handful of immature cormorants drying their wings at the side of one of the basins. Adults were flying over three at a time and all seemed headed for Woolston Eyes. A few mallards and grebes drifted on the water and a heron stalked the bank.

Irlam Locks 

As I walked back down Irlam Road the martins congregated on the telegraph wires after mobbing a passing herring gull, an oystercatcher made a racket as it flew up the canal and a whitethroat sang from one of the hawthorns. I got to the bus terminus as the 256 pulled in. I'd expected a bit of a gentle potter about but it turned out to be a very productive afternoon's birdwatching.

Sand martins savouring their victory over a herring gull

Flixton

Sand martins, Irlam Locks

It was another splendidly sunny day, I was feeling a bit low energy and a bad night's sleep and the pollen counts vied for my attention but I didn't want to waste the weather. I decided I'd get the train into town and go out for a gentle dawdle somewhere, probably getting the train to Hadfield and pottering up a bit of the Longendale Trail or some such. I looked at the crowd lining the platform at Oxford Road waiting for the train into Piccadilly, I looked at the departure boards, I asked myself if I really wanted the experience of a warm, busy Friday afternoon Piccadilly Station waiting for uncertain trains and the answer was: Good God No!

So I got back on the train I came in on, got off at Flixton and had a walk round Wellacre Country Park.

I stopped to have a look at the Mersey at Flixton Bridge. Last time it was a dipper and a pair of gadwalls, today it was a grey wagtail and two drake mallards. Sometimes there's nothing, I quite enjoy the unpredictability of the game.

River Mersey, Flixton Bridge 

Blackbirds, chiffchaffs and robins sang by the riverside; blue tits, great tits, house sparrows and goldfinches fidgeted about, woodpigeons clattered around as they disbudded hawthorns and jackdaws commuted between the fields on the other side of the river and their nests over in Town's Gate. I walked through onto the path up Green Hill and blackcaps, wrens and whitethroats joined the songscape. 

Green Hill

Green Hill 

Peacocks, orange tips and small whites peppered the open slopes while speckled woods, holly blues and large whites fluttered about the wooded areas at the base of the hill. Every hawthorn bush had its cloud of St. Mark's flies to walk through, every bramble patch its whitethroat ready to scold passersby.

Walking back down through the trees and listening to the churring of blue tits and great tits as I passed and the tutting of long-tailed tits impatient for me to be on my way, I worried I haven't seen or heard willow tits here for a long while. I hope they've not been pushed out by the competition.

Peacock

I passed under the railway bridge, tiptoed around the sunbathing peacock butterflies and had a quick nosy at Dutton's Pond. A mallard duck was being bothered by two drakes, I'd spend the next hour watching her fly from place to place across the country park with them in hot pursuit. There's nothing courtly and gentle about mallard courtship. The coots and moorhens were muttering unseen from the flag irises.

Dutton's Pond 

The songscape resumed as I walked by the railway embankment to Jack Lane. A long-tailed tit bounced by with a huge beakful of insects and it stopped to pick off a few more aphids from a willow twig.

Walking to Jack Lane 

Jack Lane Nature Reserve 

I could hear two reed warblers singing as I approached the path across Jack Lane Nature Reserve, one either side in the reeds. As I stepped over the gateway a third piped up over at the far end by Jack Lane. Then a sedge warbler started singing from the brambles at the side over towards the railway. For a couple of minutes it was bewildering as the four birds jammed scratchy improvisational songs, the sedge warbler slightly harsher and given to suddenly riffing off at an angle to the tune, the reed warblers keeping to the structure of the song throughout. They went quiet as I started walking along then the reed warbler next to the path decided I wasn't anything and resumed singing. For once I got a visual on the water rail as it squealed nearby, albeit just the wobbling of reeds as it passed through. It's a while since I've heard a Cetti's warbler here, it was good to hear one today.

Jack Lane Nature Reserve
No dragonflies yet.

I walked down to Town's Gate and walked down Irlam Road to the locks to have a quick look round before getting the bus home. The swallows had arrived and joined the sand martins on the telegraph lines. While the martins are nesting on the locks the swallows will be nesting in the nearby stables.

Swallows and sand martins

The sand martins were mostly prettying up, skimming the top of the water on the canal before coming to the wires to preen.

Sand martin

Sand martins

Sand martin

Sand martin

Sand martins, wet and dry

The great crested grebes were all downstream of the lock today, as were the cormorants. A pied wagtail bounced about the downstream lock gates, a grey wagtail the upstream. There were just the two common terns today, making enough noise for a regiment. There weren't many black-headed gulls and they were letting the magpies have sole rights to the filtration pans on the water treatment works.

I wandered back down Irlam Road and struck dead lucky with the bus home waiting for me at the stop. Back home a teapot was singing my name.

Mosses

Blackbird, Irlam Moss

The regular reader will not be remotely surprised to hear that I left the house on a sunny day and it was raining when I got to the station. They might be more surprised to hear that it stopped raining as the train got into Irlam and it became a fine, if muggy, afternoon which seemed to bring out all the songbirds.

For once I didn't complain about late-running trains, my first swift of the year flew high overhead Humphrey Park Station three minutes after the train was due.

Dandelion 

Blackbirds, a blackcap and a coal tit sang in gardens as I turned into Astley Road from Liverpool Road. I hadn't gone far before adding great tits, dunnocks, robins, blue tits and house sparrows to the songscape and an oystercatcher called loudly as it flew past. The woodpigeons were busy feeding and couldn't be bothered joining in. Jackdaws and pigeons flew hither and thither and half a dozen lesser black-backs circled noisily, keeping two schools' playgrounds in view.

Astley Road 

The songscape got louder and more varied as I walked down Astley Road. Goldfinches, chiffchaffs, blackbirds and wrens joined in. The calls of pheasants, lapwings and carrion crows came from the fields where blackbirds and song thrushes rummaged on the turf and grey partridges bustled about the field margins. A pair of kestrels flew low over the Jack Russell's gate, they would turn out to be the only kestrels I saw all day.

Irlam Moss 

Swallows hawked over the junction with Roscoe Road and greenfinches bounced about in the hawthorns. Over the way half a dozen black-headed gulls danced for worms in the grass.

Pied wagtail
The disruptive black and white plumage works best on damp mud.

Over the motorway and the turf field was awash with black-headed gulls, woodpigeons and blackbirds. Out in the middle a couple of lapwings did a display flight. A few pied wagtails, starlings and a mistle thrush hunted along the field's edge. A pale shape fidgeting about in the mid-distance was a female wheatear. There were far more pied wagtails and starlings flitting about the horses' fetlocks in the paddocks across the road. Further down a flock of rooks had the big turf fields all to themselves.

Chat Moss at Four Lanes End 

The songscape resumed on the approach to Four Lanes End. Great tits churred and squeaked as they saw me on my way. Dunnocks, chiffchaffs and robins sang from the depths of bushes, blackcaps and blackbirds struck poses as they sang in trees.

Whitethroat 

The walk down Lavender Lane was punctuated by churring whitethroats and wrens. Mallards flew over to the wet field to the South, joining a Canada goose that seemed at a loose end. To the North, pheasants and woodpigeons rummaged about the rough grazing. Kestrels were notably absent. The chiffchaffs in the trees by the field edges gave way to the willow warblers singing in the willow scrub by the entrance to Little Woolden Moss.

Winter Hill from Little Woolden Moss

I had an aim in view in today's visit. A whinchat's been on the ploughed barley field North of the reserve and I hoped to see it, as well as check to see if the yellow wagtails are back yet. I walked round, tiptoeing past peacock butterflies and getting the raspberry from willow warblers and great tits. The usual family of carrion crows were romping over the moss, upsetting black-headed gulls, lapwings and a curlew. I looked over the field. The rest of the usual crowd of crows in the far corner, check. A handful of lapwings, check. A bunch of jackdaws upsetting the lapwings, check. And in another corner, way over, a few stones. Except one moved. Was it the whinchat? All I was seeing was a head-on view of a bird with an orange chest and a bandit mask, possibly a pale eye stripe though it may be a pale crown to the head. A good ten minutes' worth of puzzlement ensued. Then I did the thing where you look away and look back to find it, just in case it really was a stone. It was twenty yards away to the right and still unfathomable. I shifted along the path a bit to see if I could position myself for a sidewards look at the bird. It was back where it started. Then it got a fit of the fidgets and showed the silvery grey back and bright white rump of a male wheatear before flying off. I started again and found I'd been looking at two birds all along, the second was still where I found it. Five excruciating minutes later it decided to hop about a bit and I established that it had a brown back and — crucially — no white arse. It was also a dumpier bird with less back end than a wheatear. I've never worked so hard to add a whinchat to the year list.

Hares-tail cotton grass

Little Woolden Moss 

I glanced at the time. I had places to be in a couple of hours so I dashed back down Astley Road, in so far as I have a dash left in me, and caught the train to Manchester by the skin of my teeth. It was that time of day where I can get home by getting the train from Liverpool into town, stay on it and get off at my station on its way back to Liverpool. Had I missed it I'd have had to do a complicated sequence of buses and hope for the best. Can't complain too much, though, for large parts of the day the buses would be the only option. And I got to the places to be after a surprisingly pleasant and productive afternoon walk.

A game of two halves

Sand martins, Irlam Locks

It was a day for having curry for breakfast. The forecast unpleasant weather duly arrived, the spadgers sulked in the trackside brambles and the robin and the blackcap sang from deep in the ivy on the embankment. I'd made plans for this eventuality and these were inevitably shot to pieces by the train services in and out of Manchester being even more of a bin fire than they are normally. I felt it all the more because twice a year all public transport services are suspended in our town so long distance running events can go ahead and this coming Sunday is one of those days. Our public transport infrastructure is so fragile it is an act of Quixotic folly to choose to rely on it.

The rain it rained and I had itchy feet. The forecast said that the weather should settle down late afternoon and even perhaps become sunny. It wouldn't be cold and rainy anyway. I decided I'd get the 256 into Flixton. I didn't fancy larking about in mud at all so I'd stick to terra firma and see if the sand martins are back at Irlam Locks.

I put my big coat on and braved the elements. A couple of dozen woodpigeons grazed on the school playing field in the rain, the young magpie had learned that begging wasn't going to get it fed anymore, and half a dozen lesser black-backs and an adult herring gull danced for worms. Nearly all the herring gulls doing the rounds locally are non-breeding youngsters, there are perhaps a handful of pairs, I don't know if this was one of them. All of a sudden they were all up. The low-flying buzzard that caused the commotion was escorted on its way by jackdaws.

Waiting for the bus I was glad of the big coat. A woodpigeon huddled in the tree next to the bus stop went through the motions of singing and another hunched over a chimney across the street answered out of the side of its beak.

The rain stopped as the bus passed the Nag's Head and when I got off at the Town Gate terminus the sun was poking through the clouds. Blackbirds, robins, woodpigeons and blackcaps sang from the gardens of Irlam Road and the hedges seethed with house sparrows. Four drake mallards skimmed the chimney pots before veering off and heading for the Ship Canal.

Hedge garlic

A pair of gadwalls and two pairs of great crested grebes drifted on the canal upstream of the locks. A few mallards dozed by the sides, a cormorant fished and some black-headed gulls loafed on the lockside. A coot pottered about furtively near the lock. Four very noisy common terns flew in and wheeled about the locks for ten minutes before drifting upstream.

Sand martin

Dozens of sand martins zipped about. Most were hawking high overhead, judging by the clouds of flies about the hawthorn bushes there was plenty to eat. A few martins darted down to twitter and fuss with each other on telegraph wires before dashing off again. I rather wished the sun was behind me as I took their photos. All the while blackcaps, robins, wrens, great tits and blue tits sang and called in the bushes, dunnocks struck poses and blackbirds chased each other off territorial margins.

Just a few flies

Sand martins

There were equal numbers of black-headed gulls and magpies on the water treatment works. I think the oystercatchers have given up on this area.

Irlam Locks 

It had become bright and sunny and I was beginning to feel overdressed. Half a dozen cormorants loafed on the locks with two pigeons. I don't know where the rest of the usual crowd of pigeons are, they don't seem to be on the railway bridge either. Downstream a pair of mallards shepherded ducklings along the bankside and two more pairs of grebes drifted about downstream. Eight great crested grebes seemed a lot to have in one area, I'm wondering if some of these are young birds that have paired up but not established a territory.

A chap on a motorbike stopped and asked if I was Steven Heywood. I admitted as such and he turned out to be an old school friend I hadn't seen in decades. He recognised me because I was still wearing the same shorts and Captain Scarlet t-shirt.

Sand martins

I've often wondered about the crowds of sand martins milling about the lock chambers. It's always seemed too many birds just to be taking advantage of midges emerging into a confined space. Today I caught a couple digging out nests in the lockside where the mortar between blocks had long since crumbled. Once I got my eye in I found more nest holes and the martins visiting them. There aren't enough locks for all the crowd wheeling about overhead to find nest sites but there's enough crumbling canalside architecture downstream to accommodate a lot of them.

Sand martin

Sand martin

Irlam Community Woodland 

On the Irlam side, I walked down Cadishead Way, crossed over and had a quick nosy at Irlam Community Woodland where chiffchaffs, robins, great tits and dunnocks vied to dominate the songscape.

Irwell Old Course 

The songbirds were more in evidence than the waterbirds on the Irwell Old Course. A couple of pairs of mallards lurked and I nearly missed the moorhen rummaging about in the grass on the opposite bank. A chaffinch and a blue tit joined the songscape. House sparrows and goldfinches fussed about, long-tailed tits bounced through willows and magpies rattled about like teenage hoodlums.

I walked on into Princes Park, where a mistle thrush sang by the café, and got the bus to the Trafford Centre and thence home. I wouldn't have given you odds on this afternoon's walk this morning.