Elton Reservoir

Elton Reservoir 

I was determined to have a lazy day, get some reading and writing done, make serious inroads on the stocks of tea, that sort of thing. But reports of black terns at Elton Reservoir made me fidgety. Black terns, like little gulls, are capricious and highly mobile Spring passage migrants, they may linger for days or they may be gone in a blink of an eye, you go to see them the first chance you get or you might not get another this year. So I headed over to try my luck.

Daisyfield Greenway
The old Bury to Bolton railway line.

I got off the 471 at Buckingham Drive, walked through the housing estate and cut over the Daisyfield Greenway onto the meadows by the reservoir. Blackbirds, willow warblers, robins and wrens sang in the trees as I passed by.

Elton Reservoir 

Some of the usual gang of mute swans, Canada geese, mallards and coots loafed about near the sailing club, half a dozen pure white fancy pigeons tidied up after a feeding the ducks session. There were a few dozen black-headed gulls out on the water making plenty of noise. Most of them were second calendar year birds moulting into their brown hoods but keeping their juvenile brown scapular feathers on their wings. It took a while to see any black terns, they were out in midwater over near the farmhouse. I reckoned I'd get a better view of them from the other side.

Lesser black-backs and black tern

I walked round onto the Southern edge of the reservoir. I was getting better views of the black terns, four of them, but they were still distant. Every so often they would disappear and I'd eventually find them as black dots sitting on top of buoys. They never lingered long, they spent most of their time feeding on insects over the water, fidgeting and jinking as they chased their prey.

Black tern

An oystercatcher called loudly as it flew low over to the fields beyond. Besides the terns and black-headed gulls on the reservoir there was a small raft of lesser black-backs, a couple of pairs of great crested grebes and a score of mallards. For once I couldn't see any tufted ducks about. Instead of the crowds of sand martins I saw last time there was just a handful of them and a couple of swallows. 

Bury and Bolton Canal 

I walked down from the reservoir to the canal, blackbirds, chiffchaffs and willow warblers singing all the way. As I crossed the canal three goosanders flew low over the bridge and headed into Radcliffe. For once I remembered to take the path under the tram bridge and was rewarded by a grey wagtail skittering about the riverbank.

River Irwell at Warth Bridge 

The 513 to Farnworth was due at the stop on Warth Bridge before the 513 to Bury, which suited me fine. I got off in Kearsley and got the 20 back to the Trafford Centre and thence home. I didn't feel like dealing with a sunny Saturday teatime in the city centre.

Holyhead

Shag diving for dinner

I had an embarrassment of complimentary travel vouchers burning a hole in my pocket so I used half of them for a day out to Anglesey. It's a lot late for the nesting seabirds at South Stack so I decided I'd have a proper explore of Holyhead Harbour and the breakwater.

Newton-le-Willows was a new addition to my list of railway stations what have a buzzard sitting in a tree, a chunky, earth-brown bird that glared at the train as it left the station. It was a day for seeing buzzards, there were a few more in the Cheshire countryside and yet more flying low over the fields of Anglesey.

It was a lovely day for a train ride along the North Wales coastline. The tide was high, there was just enough mud left for a few shelducks and a big flock of black-headed gulls on the coast just North of Mostyn, beyond that the waves lapped seawalls. Little egrets and herons haunted salt marshes, carrion crows, jackdaws and rooks rummaged in fields, herring gulls and woodpigeons sat on chimney pots and starlings on wireless antennae. Mute swans and little egrets peppered the big island on the marine lake at Rhyl, a crowd of little egrets clustered by the viaduct over the Clwyd.

Crossing over onto Anglesey the flocks of rooks became more frequent as the train passed through sheep farming country. A big flock of greylags grazed near Llyn Coron just after Bodorgan Station, there was a bigger one near Rhosneigr Station.

The Old Harbour 

I got off the train and wandered over the Old Harbour into Holyhead. I stopped for a look round, as well as the inevitable herring gulls and pigeons there were a couple of shags and a sleeping guillemot. Black guillemots frequent the harbour and I got my hopes up but this bird had all dark upperparts so was definitely a common guillemot. (In Summer, black guillemots are black top and bottom with big white patches on their wings, in Winter they're nearly all white with flecks of black on their backs and a broken black margin to those white wing patches.)

Instead of my usual walk across the town centre and out for South Stack I walked beside the harbour along Victoria Road. At the top of the road there's a gap by the houses looking over an inlet of the New Harbour. Herring gulls and oystercatchers dozed on rocks, a heron was asleep on an island and a couple more shags were out fishing in the water.

Rock pipit

I carried on round the road and dropped down to the promenade next to the Maritime Museum. The sea was lapping at the seawall and a rock pipit was skittering over the rocks by the seawall. One of the shags was fishing close enough to try and get its photo. Unlike the only black guillemot of the day which was out in midwater by the boats. It was in Winter whites, the first time I've seen this plumage, and at first I took it for one of the little buoys marking the harbour pathways. Then I realised what it was then convinced myself I was right first time and was only sure about it when it dived underwater and bobbed back up again fifty yards further out.

Shag 

Holyhead Mountain from the marina 

A nosy round the marina found a lot more herring gulls and a few black-headed gulls and carrion crows, and redshanks and oystercatchers dozed in pairs on the rocks. A way over I could see people walking the length of the breakwater (it's about a mile and a half long). I reckoned I could try a bit of seawatching on there so I took the path to Breakwater Road.

Along the way I took a detour. A rough path led into some woodland so I followed it, adding chiffchaffs and titmice to the day's tally. Then I got to a bit where the path had collapsed down a bank. I'd have crossed the gap in younger, dafter days but I decided not to risk it on untrustworthy knees and turned back. Along the way I spent a while trying to get a photo of an ichneumon wasp that was hunting on a bit of stone wall.

Ichneumon wasp 

The path had evidently been a private road to the castellated Victorian ruin on Breakwater Road. Parts ran along high banks thick with ivy, hart's tongue ferns and polypody. Elsewhere there were high walls thick with ivy and fizzing with insects. Commas, red admirals and speckled woods feasted on the ivy flowers, bees and hoverflies buzzed, Southern hawkers snatched small flies out of the air in passing. It felt very much like Summer.

Red admiral 

Comma

Goldfinches, great tits and robins flitted to and fro between the trees on either side of the road.

Goldfinches
When they sit still it isn't easy to pick out goldfinches from dead leaves but as they never sit still the problem doesn't arise.

A picturesque ruin

The breakwater, the New Harbour on the right, the Irish Sea on the left 

I had hoped that when I got onto the breakwater I'd get a closer look at the black guillemot and perhaps find some more but no luck in either case. In fact nearly all the birds were more distant than they had been from the marina. The seawatching was the typical combination of optimism, patience and frustration tempered by a couple of moments of triumph. Nearly all the birds I could see were gulls, mostly herring gulls with a few black-headed gulls and a couple of passing great black-backs. Just as my spirits were flagging a juvenile gannet flew by one of the great black-backs. Crows had been flying across the harbour. One flying over the sea took my eye as it looked a lot broad-winged, even more so than a rook, but I concluded it was just a trick of the angle I was seeing it by. Then it called a few times and headed off up and over to Holyhead Mountain and I added chough to the year list. How I missed a dirty long red bill I do not know.

Snowdonia from the end of thf breakwater

The New Harbour

Wheatear 

A rock pipit jumped over the seawall on my approach. A wheatear kept its nerve but also kept its distance. It was a young bird in fresh plumage and the white tips of the tail puzzled me until I worked that out.

Wheatear

I walked the length of the breakwater and walked back. An adult gannet passed by on the open sea about a quarter of a mile out. Glancing down at the path I realised that despite the island being made up of Pre-Cambrian gneisses that had been folded and compressed and partially melted under high pressure the breakwater has been dressed in fossiliferous Carboniferous limestone.

Rugose corals, possibly Lithiostrotion

The walk back to the station was uneventful except the bit where I was forcibly reminded that the roads on this end of town have some steep stretches both up and back down into the town centre. I was glad of a sit down when I got to the station.

There were yet more corvids, greylags, buzzards and woodpigeons as the stopping train to Shrewsbury made its way across Anglesey. Mute swans cruised on the Cefni at Malltraeth while a kestrel hunted along the bank. The tide had ebbed and beyond Llanfairfechan the gulls on the beach were joined by little egrets and pied wagtails.

Great Orme from the train

I changed at Llandudno Junction where a couple of dozen house sparrows settling to roost in a bush by the pedestrian bridge contrived to sound like a couple of hundred. As the train back to Manchester trundled through the twilight I was the old man with his nose pressed against the window looking for owls.

Merseyside bumper bundle

Grey phalarope, Crosby Marine Park

After yesterday's escapade I decided to head over for a walk on the Wirral. The Leach's petrel passage has started and having had no luck with them last year I thought I'd give it a go. It was a wild and wet 'n' windy morning but considerably calmer than yesterday.

I got the train from Humphrey Park and got to Liverpool without any hassle. As we were coming in to Liverpool I noticed a report of a grey phalarope on the boating lake at Crosby Marine Park. I decided to go for that first, it would be low tide in an hour or two, it made sense to have a look at the phalarope, have a nosy round then get over to the Wirral for the turn of the tide. So this I did.

Herring gulls

Coot

Little egret

As I was walking down the path to the lake a chap told me where the phalarope could be found. It was by the reeds on the side opposite the path. This came as a great relief, the last time I came to see one here I nearly stepped on it. Black-headed gulls, herring gulls and lesser black-backs mooched around. A crowd of coots were feeding in the grass. Little egrets were hunting by the side of the marine lake. And the phalarope was where the chap said.

Grey phalarope

When I first spotted it the bird was swimming by the reeds. A couple of people were standing on the bank taking photos of it so it swam over to them. Phalaropes are very obliging if you can get close to them. It hopped up onto the bank and started to rummage about in the spume and rubbish and seemed to be finding plenty to be getting on with. I kept my distance, I'm out of practice dodging small animals about my feet.

Grey phalarope

Grey phalarope

Mute swans and black swan

Down the other end of the boating lake a black swan was loafing with some mute swans and tufted ducks. I can't remember seeing them side by side before, I was surprised how much smaller the black swan was. As I was taking some photos a Cetti's warbler erupted into song from the sea buckthorns behind me, rather to my surprise.

Crosby Beach

It was blowing a hooley and blowing sand and rain into my face. Did I really want to go and have a look on the beach? Apparently so. The rain stopped and it became fitfully sunny. The sort of weather to expect some damn fool sailor gamboling on the beach in so'wester and wellingtons. The tide still had a bit to ebb but was still a lot closer than it would have been at Leasowe. Far off dark shapes above the waves were paragliders on Wallasey Beach. All the gulls flew ponderously into the wind like great black-backs, even the black-headed gulls, and most had the sense to loaf on the beach for a rest after flying a few hundred yards. All the black shapes flying low over the waves were cormorants or lesser black-backs, except the one that was a swallow. On the beach nearly all the white shapes flirting with the surf were black-headed gulls and my assumption that they all were nearly led me to miss a couple of sanderlings not quite fully moulted into full Winter whites. There were a few curlews about and a handful of oystercatchers — there were a lot more of them out on the sandbars in the estuary — and a small flock of knots flew North up the beach.

I walked over to the fence by Seaforth Nature Reserve where Canada geese loafed and grazed on the grass with magpies and starlings. Shelducks cruised the pools and all but a few redshanks had left the roost for the estuary. It was a nice surprise to see some terns about. An even nicer one that only one was a juvenile common tern, at least three being adult black terns.

A mixed tit flock — long-tailed tits, blue tits and chiffchaffs — greeted me as I wandered into the little nature reserve next to the sailing club, the long-tailed tits coming within arm's reach to check me out. It's definitely Autumn, they've lost their Summer shyness.

Common stork's bill

I wandered back and got the trains out to the Wirral. I decided I'd get off at Moreton and potter about Leasowe Lighthouse before getting onto the revetment for a wader- and seawatch. We'd got to Bidston when I saw the report that the white-winged black tern was back at Marshside. I wasn't for turning back, I could spend all day on the trains. If I struck ludicrously lucky with a Leach's petrel early on then I might make tracks, otherwise I'd have to hope it stuck around for a bit.

Leasowe Lighthouse 

Kerr's Field was quiet save a few woodpigeons in the paddocks and the robins, goldfinches and chiffchaffs in the trees. There was more of the same around the lighthouse and on the common.

Leasowe Beach

The tide was well out. A thin grey line in the distance was a mass of gulls, cormorants and oystercatchers loafing at the tideline. There were more gulls closer in, black-headed gulls shrimping in pools or flying about the revetment in the hopes of a feed, rafts of herring gulls and a few lesser black-backs loafing on mudbanks. Redshanks and little egrets were everywhere, the calls of black-headed gulls punctuated by the piping of redshanks and the evil croaks of squabbling egrets. A scan through the crowds of loafing gulls found a handful of common gulls. A few curlews strutted about the mud, I looked very hard at one particularly small curlew but could only conclude it was a particularly small curlew.

Herring gulls and oystercatchers

Little egrets

Approaching the groyne

It was an exhausting walk down to the groyne, it was a very bracing wind I was walking into. A few turnstones joined the redshanks at the base of the revetment, a few red admirals flew in from the estuary. Redshanks and turnstones were already flying in to roost on the groyne even though the turn of the tide was as yet barely perceptible. It was a few minutes before I noticed the ringed plovers sitting on the flat sandy plateau.

Curlew

Turnstones, redshanks and little egret

Wheatear

I clambered from the revetment up onto the path in a less than dignified fashion like a gin-addled Moomin and had a sit down to catch my breath. I was definitely walking back to Leasowe and that little voice in the back of my head was saying I should carry on to New Brighton. I sat in the company of a gloriously colourful male wheatear that at first I mistook for some sort of giant whinchat. His size, he was a big lad, the brown of his mantle and the richness of the orange underparts pointed very strongly to his being a Greenland wheatear rather than a local.

Wheatear

Herring gulls, black-headed gulls and oystercatchers

The tide was pushing the gulls and waders in as I walked back along the coastal path. I don't hear whimbrels call very often so I was doing a lot of "What the hell was that" before I found the culprit flying over the mud. Of the other incoming waders what wasn't oystercatcher or redshank was curlew. Inland, startlngs and moorhens rummaged about on the golfing greens.

Starling

Wallasey Beach

There was more of the same as I walked down to Wallasey. The sea was rolling in fast now. A flight of shelducks provided a very useful sense of scale as I stared out to sea. Apparently I'd just missed a Sabine's gull at Leasowe, I kept my eyes peeled but I couldn't see anything I could even think might be one, that big white triangle on the open wing is a dead giveaway. I was having no luck finding Leach's petrels either. A juvenile stonechat flew up a bank to sit at the pathside and give me a hard stare. A wheatear flew down the bank to give me a hard stare from a distance. I don't know how I offended them.

Wheatear

I called it a day. The beach was awash with dog owners playing Canute with the waves and dogs looking embarrassed at their giddy owners. I headed over the dunes and followed the Coastal Trail to Leasowe Road, passing flocks of goldfinches and greenfinches over the common land and a swarm of swallows over the paddocks. It was a relief when I got to Wallasey Village Station though I could have done without all them steps. Late though it was there were red admirals fluttering about the station while I waited for the train.

Meols Beach

It's probably just as well the nights are drawing in, I'm daft enough to have gone for that third walk. The Sabine's gull was seen again about half an hour after I left so I'll have to count that as a dip.

Wallasey Beach 

Pennington Flash

Long-tailed tits 

The robin started singing five minutes before dawn. Yesterday had been a long and tiring day, I was exhausted when I got home then had to run an entirely unnecessary errand, and I'd had a fitful night's sleep so I wasn't feeling at what passes for my best. Then the sneezing started. I galloped my way through the hypochondriac's lexicon while I made a pot of tea then looked out of the window and saw they were mowing the school playing field. It was a bright, sunny day, I decided on an afternoon dawdle round Pennington Flash.

The changes to the timetable for the 132 and 126 have settled down now. The 132 is scheduled to leave the Trafford Centre at five past and thirty-five minutes past the hour and the 126 at ten to the hour, except the times when they don't. I can sort of see the rationale for the fidgeting the times about but it plays hob with planning a journey. Anyway, I got the 132, got off at Sale Lane and got the V1 to Leigh, arriving two minutes before the 126 I'd have had twenty more minutes' hanging around the Trafford Centre bus station to get. 

There was still at least one house martin flying about the Sale Lane bus stop. This time of year I don't expect to see much down the V1 guided busway besides the magpies and woodpigeons on the grass verges. The hedgerows alongside are pretty dense, the leaves hiding all the small birds in there. A flyover raven as we passed through Tyldesley was a nice surprise. It looked to be heading for Cutacre. 

A bigger suprise came further along as we skirted Lilford Park. The bus had had to slow for a crossing point, as we passed a large tree in the hedgerow a small brown bird flew out from a branch, caught a fly and settled back on its branch. Which is how spotted flycatcher got added to the year list. I was almost as surprised at immediately recognising it as seeing it, they just have a completely difference jizz to our other birds but I see them so rarely these days I forget that. Back in the days when they were a regular, if uncommon, feature of my birding year the mantra was always: "Look for the interface between dark and light." Sitting in the depths of a well-covered tree next to a brightly sunlit busway would be spot on.

Pennington Flash Country Park 

I got the 610 to Pennington Flash and walked in from St Helens Road. As I got off the bus a buzzard floated slowly overhead, shadowed by a couple of black-headed gulls. A mixed tit flock rummaged through the hedgerow by the meadow, a couple of goldcrests popping out of the hawthorns to let me know they'd seen me before getting back to the business of gleaning insects from the leaves. The brook looked in a healthier condition than on my last visit and a bunch of mallards were fussing about by the bank.

Black-headed gull and mute swans

Tufted ducks 

The flash and the car park were busy. Nearly all the birds on the car park were Canada geese, most of the mallards preferring to sit in crowds under the trees and most of the mute swans herding together at the head of the brook. The usual sundry collection of black-headed gulls, moorhens and coots loafed by the bank. Out on the water there were large rafts of birds: tufted ducks fairly close in, coots further to the opposite bank and large gulls, mostly lesser black-backs, out in the middle. A few great crested grebes cruised about and a fishing party of a couple of dozen cormorants steamed out into the middle just short of the gulls. It's a long time since I've seen more than a handful in one of these groups. I couldn't see what they were catching but it looked like they were pretty successful at it. I'd heard a few chiffchaffs on the way in, a not-quite chiffchaff squeak in one of the bushes made me stop and I found a willow warbler in nice, clean yellow Autumn plumage rummaging about in the twigs.

Cormorants 

A couple of black terns had been reported on the flash. I assumed that's what the guys in the F.W. Horrocks Hide were looking for. I didn't expect to have much luck with the terns so had a look round to see what else was about. The lapwings were more easily seen than heard as they were hidden by vegetation on the bank of the spit. A few cormorants and herring gulls loafed at the end, mallards and gadwalls dozed, a chiffchaff fussed about in a bush by the hide and a Cetti's warbler sang from the scrubby undergrowth beyond. Way out, over towards the rucks, a few swallows were hawking over the trees and beyond them a hobby was soaring and swooping. It didn't look like the hobby was taking swallows, it was more likely catching dragonflies. As I looked down from the hobby to the flash I noticed a small, dark tern on a buoy. It was probably a black tern, the bird swooping around it was most definitely a juvenile black tern. They were both distant but showing well and I spent five minutes watching them. I told the other guys that if they waited a few minutes after I left the black terns would come and sit on the signpost in front of the hide. I rather hope they did, it would be a nice photo for somebody to have.

Hawthorn 

I walked down to the Tom Edmondson Hide past more chiffchaffs and mixed tit flocks and migrant hawkers hunting along the edge of the tree canopy, almost a reverse strategy to the spotted flycatcher. The warming-up exercises of the drake gadwalls on Pengy's Pool as they practiced their canoodling whistles sounded uncannily like the wheezes of bullfinches, the illusion spoiled by the complacent quack at the end. The Cetti's warblers were unmistakable. Reed- and scrub-cutting was in progress in front of the hide, the only birds to be seen were a couple of dabchicks that were studiously ignoring the work and a flock of long-tailed tits flitting between the willows at the back.

At Ramsdales Hide 

The reeds at Ramsdales Hide had been cut a couple of weeks ago. The water's so low most of the pool's dried out and is a sea of corn mint. Teals and shovelers loafed on the relict gullies and inlets, brown hawkers and migrant hawkers patrolled over the mint which was in full flower and full of insects.

Blue tit

Great tit

I walked round to the Bunting Hide. I was very conscious I'd not seen any finches and hoped for at least a chaffinch or two to fill the gap. No such luck. There was, however, a crowd of great tits, blue tits and coal tits which happily ignored the family throwing nuts to the squirrels at the other side of the hide, the great tits bobbing over every so often to see if there was anything they could grab. The dunnocks and long-tailed tits were a bit shyer but not by much. As I left the hide I noticed a couple of Southern hawkers flying high in the tree canopy. The butterflies were few and far between, mostly speckled woods with a couple of large whites and a red admiral.

Blue tit

Long-tailed tit

From the Charlie Owen Hide 

The pool at the Charlie Owen Hide was a shadow of its former self and mostly filled with mallards and gadwalls. A couple of herons loafed on the edge of the extended island and teals and dabchicks kept out of their way.

Pennington Flash Country Park 

It had been a very productive potter about but the tiredness was catching up on me and the joints were suggesting there'd be rain before nightfall. So rather than toddling back to the bus stop and getting a bus back into Leigh I walked up to the canal and walked down the towpath into Leigh. There are times when I don't know who's making these decisions, I'm just along for the ride. I was glad of it, though, as three or four kingfishers zipped up and down the canal as I walked along. I suspect one of the ones that headed into the trees looped back and came round a second time. It's getting to be a good Autumn for kingfishers.

Leeds and Liverpool Canal

I did okay by buses back and got to the front gate just as it started raining.