Amberswood

Heron

I decided to rein in the plans for today after feeling exhausted just doing a simple errand. A pottering about sort of a day would probably be a sensible idea. I got the 132 from the Trafford Centre to Amberswood and ambled the mile and a half over to Spring View for the 609 to Leigh and thence back home. The target bird for the day was song thrush, of all things. I've had an odd couple of months where I've seen more pallid harriers than song thrushes.

Walking in from Wigan Road 

The walk in from Wigan Road was quietly busy. Robins sang and titmice fidgeted in the depths of the hedgerows. Unlike them, a goldcrest made a bit of an exhibition of itself and I got some more photos of where a warbler was a moment ago.

Amberswood 

The titmice were a lot more conspicuous at the corner of the lake. Coincidentally, somebody had filled the feeders. Great tits monopolised the feeders, blue tits and blackbirds picked up the litter underneath. Long-tailed tits, meanwhile, bounced through the reeds and willows with gay abandon, quite often coming over to give me a hard stare before flitting off on their way. I noticed that one of the goldcrests following the gang had a silver ring on its leg, trying to read the number on it turned out to be a mug's game. A treecreeper showed well, until I got my camera out of my bag. A Cetti's warbler didn't show at all but had a lot to say for itself. A water rail contented itself with a single blood-curdling squeal.

Amberswood Lake 

Goldfinches and a couple of siskins hung upside down in the tops of the alder trees as they tugged seeds out of the cones. There were lots of woodpigeons and magpies about and a steady traffic of carrion crows and jackdaws overhead.

Out on the lake the mallards and coots were very anti the little radio-controlled boat one of the carp anglers was using to drop bait. They kept well away, huddled in one corner with the mute swans and coots. The great crested grebes didn't seem to be much bothered, the two full-grown humbugs were too busy begging their parents for food and the parents were too busy studiously ignoring their begging. The dozen black-headed gulls having a wash and brush-up were similarly unmoved except when the boat came into the raft and was received with a lot of bad language until it moved on.

By Amberswood Lake 

A heron flew in and perched on a small tree next to the lake. It hadn't noticed me standing nearby until it was too late and it was committed to the landing. We spent the next couple of minutes pretending not to have seen each other. A sudden chorus of squeaks and ticks from great tits and robins heralded the arrival of a male kestrel which skimmed the treetops then flew up one of the rides towards Ince.

Amberswood 

I walked through the wood to Spring View and got the 609 in to Leigh for the buses home. There were more mixed tit flocks bouncing through the trees, robins sang and/or struck poses on twigs as I walked past and every fifty yards a wren gave me a good scolding. It had been a very pleasant and productive short walk and the weather was impeccable. Which was nice, but I didn't find me any song thrushes.

New Brighton

Pied wagtail 

After a wild and woolly weekend and storms A and B ticked off the worksheet I headed over to New Brighton. It was very unlikely that I'd be experiencing the giddy excitements of the hardy souls who were yesterday ticking off skuas and phalaropes, gannets and Leach's petrels but there might be something lingering about and a walk along the promenade sucking in a lot of sea air would do the pipes a bit of good.

It was a quiet run over. All the small birds were keeping well under cover out of the wind and only a few carrion crows were hardy — or daft — enough to be trotting about out in the open. It was heaving down with rain still when I left home, by the time we reached Hunts Cross the cloud was breaking and the occasional streak of sunlight lit the air.

Herring gulls
It's a good time of year to remind myself there's not a lot of back end to a herring gull.

The tide was high, just starting the ebb when I arrived at the promenade. Herring gulls and starlings strutted about the prom. Out at sea the visibility was surprisingly good. While I couldn't count the blades of grass on the dunes at Crosby I could imagine a Ladybird book illustrator making a good fist of the landscape from here. Herring gulls, cormorants and oystercatchers flew in from across the estuary, more herring gulls headed West towards the emerging Wallasey Beach. An adult yellow-legged gull joined the exodus that way. Having the resident adult on Salford Quays has trained me to spot that big white mirror on the outer primary when it's presented to me.

New Brighton 

Herring gulls and cormorant

The redshanks were in the process of abandoning the pontoons on the marine lake, the turnstones had already skedaddled. A couple of dozen herring gulls were left to doze with a couple of loafing cormorants .

Redshanks 

Redshank and bar-tailed godwit

The beach by Fort Perch was already busy with herring gulls, redshanks and oystercatchers. Turnstones skittered over in ones and twos to join the crowds on the breakwater. A bar-tailed godwit probed the soft mud at the timeline.

Cormorants 

The breakwater at the mouth of the Mersey was stiff with cormorants. Herring gulls, oystercatchers and starlings combed the emerging shoreline. I looked in vain for any of the common gulls I'd expect to be dotted about here.

Herring gulls 

I decided to walk the length of the prom back and get the train from Wallasey Grove Road. It was a nice afternoon and though the wind was strong it was soft and warm and surprisingly fluffy. As the tide retreated more of the beach was given to herring gulls, redshanks black-headed gulls and oystercatchers, a few lesser black-backs and common gulls floated in to join the buffet. As always there was a bewildering range of herring gull plumages, not exclusively dependent on age. Some of the adults had pristine white heads, a small majority were liberally streaked brown, especially about the eyes, some were very heavily streaked about the whole head and neck. A couple of the younger gulls were so heavily streaked it looked like they were wearing grey hoods and I started to ask myself questions about Azores gulls. A startlingly high-contrast first-Winter black-headed gull had me scratching my head for a minute or two.

Looking over to Liverpool Docks

I was spending a lot of the time apologising to carrion crows for interrupting their shell-breaking operations. It was finely judged stuff: if they dropped the shell from a low height it took four or five goes to break open a cockleshell. If they dropped it from higher up the shell would break first time but would be snatched by a gull or another crow. Ten feet up appeared to be the optimum height, the shells broke on the second drop. Further along, beyond the Pierrot, the crows were making tidy work of some huge sand gaper clams that the storms had washed out into the open. 

The argy-bargy amongst the herring gulls on the mudbanks seemed to be about sand gapers and starfish. There was a lot of strutting about in albatross postures as they jostled for whatever one of them had unearthed this time.

Female pied wagtail 

Pied wagtails skittered about the sea wall, more often heard than seen as they ducked in between the rocks and pieces of concrete on the seaward side. I kept hearing rock pipits, too, but was only getting tantalising glimpses of them until I happened to look down one of the flights of steps and found one bathing in the puddle at the base.

Rock pipit

The end of the promenade 

I reached the car park before the revetment and asked myself if I fancied having my skin peeled by the sand blown in from the dunes. Meadow pipits danced over the marram grass as they struggled against the wind. I headed for the station and was fair jiggered when I got there. Still, I'd got a walk in, it felt like the exercise had done some good and the birdwatching wasn't to be sniffed at either.

Home thoughts

Spagers

If I had to have to have best part of a week laid up by the lurgi I'd much rather have it in July when there's the square root of bugger all doing birdwise than the third week in October when the weather's getting interesting. We are where we are, and at least I wasn't tempted to brave the winds and put my fate in the hands of today's non-existent public transport services.

Spadgers

I knew the spadgers were out there somewhere as the feeders have been steadily denuding this past few days. The wind started to ease mid-afternoon and they all emerged, blinking, out of deep cover. It's a smaller flock than I'm used to this time of year, just a dozen birds. They've had a hard Summer and not a lot of incentive to visit, let's see if numbers resume now feeding's resumed. As well as the suet pellets and mealworms I'd put out a couscous with chickpeas and fruit which I ordinarily would have found delicious but couldn't actually swallow without inducing a coughing fit and pebble-dashing the living room. The robins and blackbirds have taken an interest. The blackbirds have also taken the last of the rowan and Pyracantha berries; bang goes my fantasy of late-Winter waxwings but I'm glad the berries got eaten in the end.

Wild, wet weather brings gulls to the school playing field. Time was, a couple of concurrent October storms would have three-figure numbers of gulls, mostly black-headed, dancing for worms. The avian flu pandemic put paid to that, numbers were knocked right back. Today's dozen black-headed gulls and a common gull is an above average appearance these days. I suspect that the hot, dry Summer hasn't done wonders for earthworm productivity on the field and it wasn't a good season for crane flies, either, so the three or four rooks that visit only spend a couple of hours feeding on leatherjackets before moving on.

Elton Reservoir

Great crested grebe 

I thought Elton Reservoir was due a visit. I don't visit nearly as often as I used to as getting there is such a faff these days, now our local trains don't stop at Deansgate it's harder to make connections North and Northeast of the City Centre. I generally get the train into Bolton and the 471 over there but this depends on my train not getting stuck at signals outside Manchester so we pull into Oxford Road as the train to Bolton pulls out. With half an hour to wait for the next one I went over to Deansgate and decided I'd get the tram to Bury and do the quick hop over on the 471. I was reminded, again, that the trams are even less reliable than the trains, even though it was one of those odd weeks of the year when large parts of the network weren't closed for relaying tracks. It literally would have been quicker for me to go to Leighton Moss than it was to get to Bury.

Anyway…

I got to Bury, got the 471 after the one that closed its doors in my face and walked down to the sailing club car park. The feeders in the tree by the car park had been reinstalled for the Winter and were busy with goldfinches, greenfinches, chaffinches and great tits. I lingered for a few minutes to get my eye in with the binoculars and to see if anything else might turn up. Collared doves sat in the depths of the tree behind the feeders. Then a willow tit popped up, pinched a sunflower seed out of a feeder while goldfinches were busy squabbling then disappeared into cover. I couldn't remember seeing one here before, looking at my records I have done but it was eight years ago. It was a nice surprise.

Elton Reservoir 

The reservoir by the sailing club was busy with mallards, coots and black-headed gulls and a few mute swans cruised about. There were no Canada geese to be seen anywhere. Great crested grebes cruised further out and there was a raft of a couple of dozen herring gulls and lesser black-backs loafing and preening in the middle of the reservoir.

Approaching the mouth of the creek

As I walked over to the creek a flock of starlings squeaked and bubbled on the electricity pylons while robins and wrens ticked impatiently as I passed their hawthorn bushes. A young female scaup had been reported so I kept a watch for it as I scanned the reservoir. I have to admit, assessing the age of female scaups is a bit beyond me, I'd have to be getting exceptionally good views to even make the attempt. Which was moot as I wasn't seeing any scaup at all.

Great crested grebe 

A peacock butterfly fluttered by and sunned itself on the path. The mouth of the creek was chockablock with coots. Great crested grebes and mallards wove their way between them and half a dozen juvenile dabchicks had gathered under the far bank. A heron lurked in the bushes behind.

Coots

The path into the creek quickly became pretty horrible so I turned and walked back to the car park, catching a couple of coal tits and a ring-necked parakeet on the feeders, and walked round to the Southern bank where the path was less treacherous. I'd felt distinctly overdressed on my way over, I was exactly right for the wind blowing across the reservoir.

Elton Reservoir 

The clouds rolled in with the wind. A couple of cormorants sat on buoys to dry their wings. There was a lot of coming and going amongst the gulls on the reservoir, including the arrival of a handful of common gulls. All the young great crested grebes were full grown and doing their own fishing.

Great crested grebe, a full-grown humbug coming into First-Winter colours

Looking over to the creek I could see a line of tufted ducks chugging along the bankside heading left. They were all definitely tufties. A couple of meadow pipits flew over and descended into the fields below the reservoir. There were a dozen more dabchicks close by the far bank, mostly juveniles. More gulls flew in and more gulls flew out. I got the impression that for the large gulls at least this was a pit stop rather than a roost.

I'd got as far as Old Hall Farm when I spotted the scaup cruising between mallards and coots on the far bank. I could manage to see that it was a female, I couldn't make a guess as to her age.

Old Hall Farm 

Carrying on I started to see teals dabbling under the far bank and a couple of pairs of gadwalls mingled with the coots, tufted ducks and great crested grebes at the end of the reservoir. A jay with a full crop of acorns flew over and down into the fields to lay its cache for the Winter.

Withins Reservoir 

A walk round to Withins Reservoir was disappointing: not only was the reservoir bone dry it was overgrown. The walk over to the canal was punctuated by great tits, jays, meadow pipits and woodpigeons with a backing track made up of the calls of jackdaws, carrion crows and black-headed gulls. As I neared the canal I could hear geese, eventually I spotted the couple of dozen Canada geese flying down to settle on Elton Reservoir.

Bury and Bolton Canal

Mallards and moorhens lurked in the reeds on the canal. The pools and large puddles were busy with teals. Being an optimist I made sure they were all teals. As the canal came into Radcliffe town centre half a dozen mute swans dozed on the canalside while a dozen Canada geese grazed on the field behind them.

I walked down Banana Path to the tram stop. The roadworks on Spring Lane had been completed and a more confusing suite of pedestrian crossings and miniature bicycle lanes I never want to see. The journey home was as long as the journey out.

Gosh, this is my 2,000th post in this blog. Congratulations to my readers for their patience.

Mosses

Chat Moss 

It was a sunny and cloudy day, the wind having picked up again. I'm going to try not to use the word "quiet," or any of its synonyms, for the rest of this week. It might not be easy. I'd annoyed myself by spending all morning telling myself I should go for a walk but having no idea where to go so come lunchtime I got the train to Irlam and headed up Astley Road.

The house sparrows were notably absent in the hedgerows and the turf fields were entirely empty, no so much as a woodpigeon. A few woodpigeons were having the last of the hawthorn berries, an occasional lesser black-back or carrion crows flew over. The small birds were keeping quietly under cover out of the wind, except the long-tailed tits flitting across the road as they swapped hedgerows and a couple of blackbirds breaking cover as I walked past. A male kestrel glided over, letting the wind do all the work.

Astley Road

Turf fields looking deceptively empty

It was similar, at first, after I'd crossed the motorway. Woodpigeons, black-headed gulls and carrion crows passed by overhead. A couple of meadow pipits flew by. Sheep were grazing the turf by the motorway accompanied by a couple of carrion crows. Further on the turf fields looked empty until I found a couple of dozen pied wagtails and a flock of linnets in a corner near the road. A couple of dozen starlings fidgeted between the fields and the telegraph wires. And in the field behind there were about fifty black-headed gulls with a few herring gulls and lesser black-backs. It actually didn't look that many on the ground but a passing female-type marsh harrier put them all up. She headed over towards Twelve Yards Road.

Approaching Four Lanes End 

The road had been busy. I was standing in the verge just before Four Lanes End waiting for three cars and two vans to negotiate passing each other when I spotted a couple of mistle thrushes in one of the trees and a couple of cock pheasants squabbling in the field opposite. It was sunny enough for a common darter to be hunting in the cover of the hedgerow out of the wind. A wren came to tell me to beggar off.

I scanned the fields at Four Lanes End to see what was about and at first it was all woodpigeons. A couple of fields North of Lavender Lane jackdaws were getting restless, breaking the treeline as they circled about. A couple of carrion crows had the fidgets, too. Just as I'd decided the disturbance was probably some farming activity two buzzards rose up, circled low over the field then drifted off in separate directions. Buzzards aren't much of a threat to corvids but they still make them fidgety.

Chat Moss 

Milky cone cup

There were yet more woodpigeons as I walked down Twelve Yards Road. Great tits and robins ticked in the hedgerows and half a dozen goldfinches flew past. A young kestrel headed over towards Lavender Lane. It wasn't that late in the afternoon but there was still the sound of small birds going to roost in the thickly planted willows in one of the fields. A little further on a couple of swallows flew low over the road, heading South. A migrant hawker patrolled the wayside. And family parties of long-tailed tits skipped between willows and hawthorn bushes along the way. I was keeping an optimistic eye out for barn owls, I found a hovering kestrel.

Kestrel

Twelve Yards Road 

Walking down Cutnook Lane the birdlife was hinted at more than seen. A blackbird muttering softly in deep bracken, contact calls of long-tailed tits, great tits and chaffinches, a dunnock somewhere in a bramble, goldfinches high in beech canopies, a mallard on the fishery. It came as a relief to find a flock of black-headed gulls in the paddocks by the motorway with pied wagtails and goldfinches flitting about the horses' hooves.

Cutnook Lane 

I had ten minutes to wait for the next 100 to the Trafford Centre where I bought a new pair of boots on my way home.

Pennington Flash

Moorhens

The cold wind continued to have its sport, bringing a couple of common gulls briefly to the school playing field and a crowd of spadgers sidled through the bushes in the back garden to the suet feeders. Errands done, I had a cup of tea while I decided where to go for a walk, bearing in mind that it was a Saturday and very windy. I decided it would be either Amberswood or Pennington Flash. I walked through the park to see if would be any more productive than yesterday — fewer woodpigeons but a blackbird made itself known and a skein of pink-footed geese passed overhead — and got the bus to the Trafford Centre where the 126 was sitting waiting for me. Pennington Flash it was, then.

Walking in from St Helens Road 

The walk in from St Helens Road was quiet, even the magpies seemed subdued. Apparent small bird noises were the creaks and cracks of willows in the wind and the falling of leaves and twigs.

Tufted ducks and coots

It was blowing a hooley on the flash and most of the waterfowl were hugging the car park. Rafts of tufted ducks and coots drifted just offshore, the mallards and black-headed gulls tended to keep to the bank, or else joined the Canada geese mugging for scraps. A few cormorants and great crested grebes fished midwater, a small raft of mostly herring gulls with a few lesser black-backs sat over by the sailing club and a herd of mute swans hugged the far bank.

The spit 

Sitting in the F.W.Horrocks Hide was a bracing experience and to look at the spit you would have sworn the tide was coming in. All the action was at the far end: cormorants, lapwings and herring gulls loafed at the end of the spit; mallards, shovelers and teals loafed on the sides; more cormorants, great crested grebes, tufted ducks, coots and dabchicks drifted about on the water. A little egret flew over the flash and looked to be heading for the golf course.

Gadwalls

There was a lot of amorous quacking from the gadwalls at the Tom Edmondson Hide. A few shovelers preened in the reeds while dabchicks and moorhens bustled about.

Dabchick and shoveler

I didn't linger long at Ramsdales, a few teals and shovelers were dabbling about but the water was too high for any waders to be wander about.

Walking round to the Charlie Owen Hide 

The walk up to the canal and round to the Charlie Owen Hide was punctuated by furtive mixed tit flocks sidling through the trees. Usually I'd be picking up the quiet contact calls of long-tailed tits then notice the shadows of great tits and blue tits flitting through the trees. Every so often a great tit would show itself on a bare branch then vanish into cover.

In contrast, the mixed tit flock by the Charlie Owen Hide was very conspicuous. Long-tailed tits flitted to and fro across the path, great tits and blue tits bounced about on twigs. One of the goldcrests in the flock was a showy and excitable male whose crest was a bright butter-yellow and gold triangle on the top of his head nearly all the time he flitted about in a hawthorn by the path avoiding having his photo taken.

Rain stopped play

Over on the golf course the mallards had abandoned the brook and were dabbling about in the huge puddles on the green.

Teals, shovelers and moorhen

The pool at the Charlie Owen Hide was busy with shovelers, gadwalls, teals, coots and dabchicks and a couple of mallards drifted in after I'd arrived. Over in one corner a cormorant was sat on a branch drying its wings, in another a heron was lurking at the edge of the reeds.

The Bunting Hide was quiet, a couple of great tits and a dunnock were having a rummage round. I lingered in the hopes that a willow tit might pass through but no joy. I'm having a bad year for both willow tits and marsh tits, I'm hoping that's just my bad fieldcraft.

At Pengy's Hide 

An eclipse drake wigeon mingled with the mallards and gadwalls at Pengy's Hide, a family of mute swans were busy feeding on the other side.

Oystercatcher and mallard

As I walked back through the car park to St Helens Road an oystercatcher made an appearance amongst the dozing mallards. Oystercatchers are pretty long-lived, the oldest British one was over forty years old, so this could be the same bird coming back every Winter.

Pennington Flash