Damp Tuesday

Taylor Park 

A long-tailed duck was reported on the lake at Taylor Park in St Helens last night and again first thing so I headed thataway. I was unlucky with long-tailed ducks last Winter, Taylor Park is dead easy to get to and experience tells me that if a duck's there it'll be seen eventually, it's a nice, straightforward site to visit.

I got the train to Warrington and the 329 bus to St Helens. Along the way I had a surprise: you don't expect to see a common darter patrolling the roadside as your bus is stuck in traffic on Winwick Road in mid-November. The poor blighter's days were numbered, the weather was turning nasty even as we crawled along. Something else's days were numbered: a kestrel caught a vole on the verge as the bus approached Burtonwood. The vole still had a bit of fight left in it and it wriggled out of the kestrel's grasp about ten feet above the ground. The kestrel wasn't having any, swooped down and caught it in mid-air and flew off. It's difficult to identify a small mammal tumbling through the air from a bus waiting for a gap in the traffic to turn at a junction but judging by the length of the tail I think it was a bank vole.

The plan had been to get a Saveaway at St Helens Bus Station but there isn't one anymore, the temporary bus stops are dotted about the town centre. It was the sort of day that would be good spent sitting on buses finding my way round bits of Merseyside I don't know (the Knowsley and Croxteth areas are blind spots), it wasn't the sort of day for buying a day saver on the bus and trying to explore new places while trying to work out whether the buses you're aiming to use are run by the right bus operator. I bought a day saver and stuck to what I knew today.

Taylor Park

I'd hoped to get to Taylor Park and see the duck before the forecast wintry squall came in. It was raining lightly when I got off the bus and walked to the park. Blackbirds were scoffing berries in gardens and grey squirrels were romping about the Moxon Street entrance to the park. This leads directly onto the Taylor Park Dam, the lake the duck was reported as being on. And was reported to have flown away from forty minutes before I arrived.

So no long-tailed duck. There were no tufted ducks, either. There were plenty of mallards and coots, a handful of moorhens, a couple of Canada geese and a couple of mute swans. A chap told me a sick mute swan had been taken into care a few days ago, which is a worry. There were also dozens of pigeons and black-headed gulls together with a couple of common gulls and a herring gull. I couldn't work out whether one of the black-headed gulls had retained its brown hood since Summer or had prematurely moulted into it. 

It was nice to bump into a couple of mixed tit flocks in the surrounding trees, mostly long-tailed tits with a few blue tits and great tits and one goldcrest. The bird surprise of the day was the kingfisher sitting on the railings by the tearooms. It was off like a shot the moment it saw me.

Taylor Park 

I also bumped into the couple of people I met last week at Leasowe. They managed to see the Lapland bunting despite my being a jinx and they went back a couple of days later and got a closer view of it, and as a bonus they saw the snow buntings that had turned up on the revetment.

I got the bus back to St Helens and got the 320 bus to Wigan, like you do. We were barely out of the town centre when the heavens opened. And then it snowed. The downpour as we passed through Haydock washed away the evidence.

Viridor Wood 

Viridor Wood is on my To Visit list so I got off the bus in Bamfurlong and walked into the wood for a nosy round. The rain had calmed down so I pushed my luck. Also like you do. I was rewarded by half an hour of bright November sunshine, accompanied by flocks of redwings, mixed tit flocks bouncing about in the trees and at least one blackbird in every hawthorn bush. I kept to the metalled paths so as not to push my luck to breaking point.

Viridor Wood, by the West Coast Main Line 

Viridor Wood 

My luck held right up to my approaching the West Coast Main Line. I sheltered in the underpass for a couple of minutes and weighed up the options. I could carry on under the railway and walk over to Abram. Which is a nice walk with not a lot of cover and a bus every half hour from Dover Lock. Or I could walk round in the shelter of the woods back round to Bamfurlong where the buses are about three an hour. Which is what I did.

Coffin Lane Brook 

I took the shortcut along Coffin Lane Brook. One bone dry Summer and you forget how to walk in mud. First chance I got I took the opportunity to leave the moorhens to their own devices and get onto a metalled path. It was nice to finally see my first song thrushes of the month, though.

Viridor Wood 

I didn't have long to wait in the rain for the next 320 and I made the connection with the 132 to the Trafford Centre easily enough. As the bus sat in heavy traffic on Manchester Road I wiped the condensation off the window and looked out and a voice in the back of my head suggested a twilight stroll into Amberswood. I'm not proud of my reply but it came from the heart.

Train stopped play. (Well, nearly. Whiz for bloody-mindedness).

Common darter

The plan was to go yomping up some hills today. The knees were not keen on the idea. I paid no attention, we were going to get the train to Bolton then get a bus and go yomping up some hills today. Climbing the stairs up the footbridge to platform 2 at Oxford Road the knees staged an intervention that persuaded me that perhaps today wasn't the day. And that I need to be ordering a couple of bushels of fiery rubbing cream for the Winter. I'd received yet another complimentary return ticket in yesterday's post and my wallet was full to busting with them so I thought I'd use one up on a trip out to Cumbria.

The regular reader will be unsurprised to learn that the train to Barrow was cancelled at Preston.

At Preston there was an announcement telling passengers to get the next train to Lancaster (I think it was a Transpennine Express one). This sounded like a workaround until I looked at the train schedules at Lancaster: instead of waiting an hour and thirty minutes at Preston for the Windermere train and hoping to connect with the Carlisle train at Lancaster you'd be waiting ten minutes at Preston and waiting an hour and twenty minutes at Lancaster. Buttons to that, I thought.

On the way back I got off at Chorley and played bus station bingo, which is how I came to get the 347 to Mere Sands Wood via Eccleston, Croston and Rufford, joining up a few more dots in my mental map of West Lancashire along the way. And along the way I noticed that Stretford isn't the only town missing its woodpigeons.

Mere Sands Wood main entrance 

I got off the bus on Holmeswood Road near the entrance to Mere Sands Wood. Next time I come this way I must remember to get off at the bus stop on Cousins Lane in Rufford and go down the footpath round the back of the houses into the wood. The main entrance is not for the faint-hearted pedestrian, even with very considerate drivers. A skein of pink-footed geese passing over was a welcome distraction.

Mere Sands Wood 

It was another blowy day, thick cloud and sunshine alternating at irregular intervals. Once inside the shelter of the wood it was a very pleasant warm Autumn day. I had a meandering wander round the paths in a generally anticlockwise direction for a change. I don't know how I got into the habit of going clockwise round nature reserves and I have no idea if it makes any difference one way or another.

Mere Sands Wood 

Robins were singing and goldfinches and chaffinches were busy in the trees near the visitor centre. As I walked into the woodland I started hearing mixed tit flocks but it was only when I leaned back to stare up in the treetops that I started seeing them. The great tits, blue tits and nuthatches worked the upper reaches of the middle canopy while the coal tits and goldcrests stayed right up top. I could hear treecreepers but only saw the tail end of one of them as it flitted between trees. Even that started in the middle and worked its way up. An over mature female Southern hawker had me puzzled for a bit as it zipped around some bushes, all the bright colours had faded on the thorax so at first sight it looked entirely black and the abdomen had faded to a dull, pale blue-green.

Bathing gadwalls

The pools weren't overly busy, a few mallards, coots and gadwalls on the water and a few common darters basking on the wooden railings of the viewing platforms.

Coot

The woods were very picturesque in the low November sun. 

Mere Sands Wood 

Mere Sands Wood 

Turkey tail fungus

There were more chaffinches and tit flocks, there were some siskins with the goldfinches in one stand of birch trees, woodpigeons clattered about, magpies rattled, dunnocks and robins squeaked and wrens sang. I spent five minutes getting a crick in my neck watching a mystery squirrel building a drey in the top branches of a pine tree. It wasn't until it made a sortie for some more twigs that I could see it was a grey squirrel. In the end all the ones I saw today were greys.

The footpath to Curlew Lane

On a whim I took the footpath out of the wood that eventually leads to Curlew Lane and thence either Martin Mere or Burscough. I thought I'd walk into Burscough Bridge for the train home. Unfortunately I wasn't sure whether or not the path into a farmyard was the footpath or not and couldn't get a good enough 'phone signal to download a footpath map so I retraced my steps back into the wood. I'll have a go at walking up from Curlew Lane some time.

Pied wagtail 
The plumage pattern makes more sense when it's not a car park or railway station.

The cabbage fields had been harvested and left to the attentions of pied wagtails and skylarks. A field away something had brought a crowd of black-headed gulls and jackdaws over to one corner.

Looking over towards Tootle Lane

Mere Sands Wood 

Back into the wood I carried on along the path by the woodland margin and was seeing much the same as before, and very nice too. 

Mere Sands Wood from Rufford 

I took the path out of the wood and followed it as it jinked round the edge of the houses, accompanied most of the way by a very confiding goldcrest that disappeared into the hawthorn hedge any time the camera got it in focus. In the end I put the camera away and we almost walked hand-in-wing down to the top of the road.

I had a couple of minutes to wait for the next bus. The 347 to Southport, the 2a to Ormskirk and the 2a to Preston arrived within two minutes of each other in that order. I got the middle one, got off at Burscough Bridge station and had five minutes to wait for the train into Manchester and caught the train home from there because although we were stuck at Castlefield Junction for ten minutes my train home was eleven minutes late so I still had plenty of time to run across the platform to get it.

Despite Northern Rail's efforts I'd had a good day out.

Pennington Flash

Gadwalls 

I thought it was time I had a wander round Pennington Flash. As a reward for the morning's good behaviour and my not crying after my flu jab the rain eased off and it became a fitfully sunny afternoon. The 588 to Plank Lane was sitting in the next bay ready to go when the 126 pulled in so I took that and walked into Pennington Flash from the Plank Lane car park and wandered round and down to St Helens Road.

Pennington Flash Country Park 

? Brown rollrim 

The woods were damp and quiet, the mixed tit flocks barely making a sound except when I'd turn a corner and surprise a great tit or blue tit. A quick scold later they'd be quietly back at their business.

Mallards

The paths leading into the Ramsdales Rucks were more damp than I was willing to negotiate (I wanted to keep my ankles dry) so I drifted back up to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and walked along the towpath a stretch before dropping down into the rucks¹. The mallards had the fires in the blood up, the drakes competing madly for the attentions of ducks that weren't all that bothered thank you. A pair of mute swans cruised down to the marina and a couple of tufted ducks minded their own business.

Tufted duck 

Dropping down into the rucks

I dropped down into the rucks and joined the path along the flash. The noise of workers strimming back the reeds and scrub by Ramsdales Hide almost drowned out the calls of black-headed gulls about the spit. The usual crowd of cormorants, lesser black-backs and herring gulls congregated at the end of the spit. There were also a couple of great black-backs, a few herons, a little egret and three great white egrets. Mute swans and great crested grebes cruised about and coots dived for mussels when they weren't quarrelling amongst themselves.

Cormorants, lesser black-backs and mute swan at the end of the Horrocks spit 

It was warm enough for a couple of speckled woods to flutter by. I thought the frantic fluttering in the grass and Michaelmas daisies on one of the verges were more of the same and was astonished to find they were large skippers. I've never seen them this late before. I don't know what had upset them but after a couple of minutes of rushing about they all retreated into the depths of the dead grasses.

Walking by the flash

Cetti's warblers sang in the reeds and brambles, chiffchaffs and great tits squeaked in the trees, robins and wrens sang in the undergrowth and carrion crows called almost incessantly in the background. Despite all the vocal cues I found myself spotting more leaves falling through the twigs than birds. I eventually found the calling coal tits and dunnocks and a family of long-tailed tits put me out of my misery by bouncing to and fro the willows by the path near Ramsdales Hide.

Mallards and teal

I decided to give Ramsdales Hide a miss. The pool opposite the Tom Edmondson Hide was liberally scattered with mallards and teals.

At the Tom Edmondson Hide 

The pool at the Tom Edmondson Hide hosted a pair of mute swans, a few pairs of gadwalls and a couple of shovelers. The gadwalls swam through the reeds to join what looked like a crowd of them on Pengy's Pool while a few mallards drifted in from stage left. I kept hearing dabchicks, eventually they drifted out from the drowned willows on the far side and bobbed up and down amongst the shovelers. Most of the movement about the reeds on the near bank was wrens, dunnocks and long-tailed tits fossicking about. A migrant hawker patrolled the tops of the reeds.

Mute swans 

I quickly gave up trying to see where the water rail was calling from and wandered down to Pengy's Hide where the pool was awash with gadwalls with a few shovelers and mallards at the edges and a little egret fishing from a willow tree down the end.

The feeders at the Bunting Hide were nigh on empty though the nuthatches, great tits and robins tried their best to find something. A couple of chaffinches fossicked about on the ground with a couple of moorhens. I was just about to leave when half a dozen blue tits descended on the feeders. I hung on a few minutes to see if anything else might be tagging along, nothing was and the blue tits didn't linger.

Shovelers 

The pool at the Charlie Owen Hide was a lot different to my last visit: only the crest of the island was above water. Here the shovelers outnumbered the gadwalls two to one.

Moorhen and mystery sleeping wader

A small brown object on the edge of the island caught my eye. It was a wader of some sort. I was looking at it end on and it had its face and beak firmly tucked into its back feathers. Judging by the shape and relatively short legs I came to the conclusion it was a snipe, which is a nice find here, and the hint of a tramline on its back suggested it was a first-Winter bird. I still wasn't satisfied though, it seemed a bit small. Mind you, when you factor out the long bill a snipe isn't a big bird. I kept hoping one of the other birds bustling about that end of the island might wake it up so I could confirm the ID. Instead they seemed to be actively avoiding it. A shoveler drifted by and had a bath, the splashing must surely wake the bird? No.

I'd taken to trying to find the dabchick that was making so much noise when something moved in the corner of my eye. A moorhen had barged into the wader causing it to wake up and take a few steps out into the open. Had anyone else been in the hide I would have had to apologise. I was right to wonder. There was the pear-shaped body, the double set of tramlines, the upper one more like a thick ribbon, and the halfway-long beak of a jack snipe. I hastily snatched a couple of photographs before it scuttled back and went to sleep again.

Gadwall, shoveler and (right) jack snipe
Pretty lousy record shot but I'm glad to get any one at all.

A bit giddy with the surprise of it I wandered round to the F.W.Horrocks Hide, usually my first port of call, today the last. The scrub on the spit had been strimmed back, giving a clear view of the end and the bight. There were a few lapwings with the cormorants and gulls at the end, closer by the banks were dotted with loafing mallards and coots. There was enough scrub left for a Cetti's warbler to be singing from it.

Pennington Flash 

Out on the flash the beginnings of the large gull roost was starting to assemble, small rafts of lesser black-backs and herring gulls keeping one from the other. The rafts of coots were significantly bigger, a couple had more than fifty birds in them. There were lots of black-headed gulls scattered about but just a couple of common gulls, both first-Winters. The first Canada geese of the afternoon were the crowd mugging for scraps on the car park.

I'd been luckier than expected with the weather and luckier yet with the birdwatching.

Walking down to St Helens Road 

¹ Somebody asked me: locally a ruck is a heap of waste. The rucks in the Leigh area are coal mining spoil that have scrubbed over over time. Some bits of Bickershaw Country Park (which was formerly called the Bickershaw Rucks) are still largely bare of vegetation.

Cutacre

Wigeon and gadwall

It was a day of surprises, starting with my popping round to check up on my dad and seeing a squirrel running down the street carrying a cooked sausage in its mouth.

It was also another very grey day though I won't grumble about it, judging by the weather forecast I'll be wishing for another one next week.

Next came an unexpectedly productive visit to my local patch, followed shortly by my watching a male stonechat perched on a wire fence hunting insects on the grass verge as the bus sat at the traffic light outside the Trafford Centre bus station.

I played bus station bingo, the 132 was first out of the hat so I headed for Cutacre.

When I've visited Cutacre in the past I've got off the bus at Tyldesley Town Hall and walked up Cumbermere Road to the railway and over the bridge into Cutacre. Crossing the roads to get to Cumbermere Road is a pain (potentially a literal one as there's a blind spot for the drivers at the crossing point) so today I got off a couple of stops earlier, crossed Manchester Road at the lights and walked up Cleworth Hall Lane, which turned out to be a lot easier and a nicer walk.

Cleworth Hall Lane 

Just past Cleworth Hall there's a gate and the lane becomes a farm track. Robins, wrens and house sparrows bustled about in the hedgerows, goldfinches twittered in the trees,  linnets twittered between fields and a mixed tit flock bounced through a stand of hawthorns. The fields were busy with carrion crows, woodpigeons and magpies with more of them flying overhead. Jays screeched about the young oak trees, stopping once in a while to give me the evil eye as I passed. A little egret flying overhead towards Bolton would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. I was standing by a gate trying to divine the identity of a medium-sized brown bird pounce-hunting from a distant hawthorn bush when fifty-odd siskins passed low overhead, all a-twitter. The medium-sized brown bird remains one of those mysteries birdwatching gives you to stop you getting overconfident.

The knees asked if we really had to

The stretch of railway line between Little Hulton and Atherton betrays Cutacre's industrial past by the number of bridges going over it. The one at the end of this lane boasted a high, steep staircase on the South side and a shallow, stepped staircase into Cutacre.

Birch boletes 

Wooly chanterelles 

The path wound through coarse pasture, damp woodland and past small pools, one big enough for a spot of fishing. The damp woodland gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how little I know about fungi, only readily recognising the almost ubiquitous honey fungus. The boletes were largely bashed-about and earwig-chewed, the shaggy inkcaps more ink than cap. The jays and magpies in the trees managed to outshout the gulls passing overhead.

Mute swan, black-headed gulls and herring gulls

The path twisted and turned and emerged at the Eastern end of Swan Lake. A couple of pairs of mute swans cruised about among the crowds of gulls. Herring gulls crowded about this side of the island while black-headed gulls jostled about by the bank. There were a few lesser black-backs and one great black-back, a dreadnought amongst cruisers. I scanned through the crowds to get a bit of practice in for another Winter of baffled gullwatching but found no surprises.

Gadwalls 

Nearly all the ducks were gadwalls, the handful of mallards needed searching for (they were all hiding in the grass on the island tucked in amongst the Canada geese) and there were only a couple of tufted ducks. A drake wigeon in eclipse plumage mingled with the gadwalls.  A female garganey's been reported most days on the lake but I wasn't seeing it. There was no way of following the path as it passed along the South side of the lake without upsetting the ducks by the bank, they swam out into the centre of the lake and were all gadwalls. A fluttering dragonfly turned out to be a female common darter, slowed down a bit by the cool weather.

Black-headed gulls, coots and gadwalls 

 

Wigeon

I'd walked most of the way round when I saw a small duck asleep on the mud at the North side. It looked a bit dark and cold brown for a teal but with its beak tucked deep into its back feathers I couldn't be sure it wasn't one, it was the sort of light where black-headed gulls look grey. As I walked round to where the path meets Engine Road I'd convinced myself it was a teal. Then I noticed that where a metallic blue-green wing patch should be there was the stripe of black and white you'd expect on a garganey. Out there in plain view and I still struggled.

Guelder rose 

The Himalayan balsam was still game if faded, the scent mingling with the smell of damp leaves like the sad end to a party. I walked down Engine Lane into Atherton. Black-headed gulls were giving a buzzard a hard time as it sat on top of an electricity pylon. It looked like a reenactment of "King Kong" but they were too far away to get the photo I wanted. The titmice in the hedgerows were a lot closer but kept to cover away from the camera lens. As did the bullfinches working their way through the guelder roses and hawthorns.

Engine Lane 

The 582 to Bolton was due in five minutes so i got that and then the trains home. That was a walk I'll repeat.