Etherow Country Park

Mandarin duck

I thought I'd best take advantage of the last afternoon before the heatwave so I had a wander over Etherow Country Park to have a look at the mandarins. The drakes are all in full eclipse plumage and there are still a few half-grown ducklings about.

Mandarin duck

The black-headed gulls are back in force now, a sign that we're past the peak of Summer.

River Etherow 

There were a couple of mandarins on the river, too. A scan round eventually found a couple grey wagtails but try as I might I couldn't see any dippers. I suspect they've abandoned this stretch of the river. I had a look at the Weir, just in case. A mandarin was dozing part way up just to keep things interesting.

Great spotted woodpecker

It wasn't too hot so I thought I'd have a walk into Keg Wood. I'd had a brief look at Ernocroft Wood but didn't fancy the steep haul in this weather but the gentler, if more persistent dips and rises of Keg Wood might be manageable. And so it turned out. It was fairly quiet: a few twittering goldfinches, woodpigeons clattering about and chiffchaffs and blackcaps having the occasional bit of song. 

Keg Wood 

I walked up to Sunny Corner and had quarter of an hour's sit down and a drink. It didn't take long for a robin to turn up and start feeding in the undergrowth by the shelter. A family of great tits passed by silently, a couple of blue tits were almost as quiet. A great spotted woodpecker flew close in and gave one of the limbs on an oak tree a good bashing, scattering flakes of wood in the process. I walked back whence I came, I didn't fancy dropping round on the full circuit, the drag uphill from Keg Pool is a task for cooler weather.

Mandarin ducks

The mandarins were out in force sunbathing along the path back to the car park. I've not seen great crested grebes on the big pool this Summer, there was a pair on there this afternoon.

Mandarin ducks

Great crested grebe

Silverdale

Oystercatchers, Jenny Brown's Point

Continuing the week's seaside theme I got myself an old man's explorer ticket and travelled up to Silverdale. This time it wasn't for a visit to Leighton Moss, instead I was off for a wander round Jenny Brown's Point. I haven't done this for years; an adult Sabine's gull has been feeding there for the past few days and that provided the prod for going for the walk.

The Met Office promised a relatively cool and cloudy day, it was warm and sunny. The effects of the prolonged dry weather was evident on the coastal pools as the train pulled into Silverdale: they were bone dry save for the furthest one out, which had a big puddle in it. A couple of mallards loafed by the side of the puddle while a herd of about fifty Canada geese shared an expanse of dry mud with half a dozen sheep. We'd passed a male marsh harrier a couple of minutes earlier as it hunted low over the marsh by the railway line.

I got off the train and walked back towards the coastal hides but instead of turning into New Road and down to the hides I carried on down Slackwood Road until I got to the junction with Hollins Lane and walked down there to Jenny Brown's Point.

Along Slackwood Road 

The road was busier than I remembered. There were woodpigeons in the fields with greenfinches singing in the margins, chiffchaffs, great tits and nuthatches called from the wooded areas. The roadsides, where not planted gardens, were thick with thistles, lady's bedstraw and cranesbills and they were busy with bees and butterflies. Most of the butterflies were gatekeepers and meadow browns, with a few ringlets, commas and large whites to keep them company.

Spear thistle

I bumped into a chap walking down the road who told me the Sabine's gull had just flown off. Evidently the traffic was birdwatchers haring down to Leighton Moss to see if it turned up on the causeway there. (It didn't, it's not been seen at all since.) No matter, I was here for a walk round Jenny Brown's Point and the gull would just have been icing on the cake.

Jenny Brown's Point 

I turned left at the farm at the bottom of Hollins Lane and carried on down the road to Jenny Brown's Point. It was high tide, just about to ebb. A couple of lesser black-backs and a herring gull were loafing on nearby rocks but most of the birds were on the other side of the little cove. A black smudge across the tideline was a couple of hundred oystercatchers, something like a hundred curlews formed a line further along the shore. The inland curve of the shoreline was littered with gulls, mostly black-headed with perhaps a dozen lesser black-backs amongst them. Further inland I could see the heads of Canada geese and greylags occasionally bobbing up out of the long, dry grass.

Juvenile black-headed gull, Jenny Brown's Point

I found a not entirely uncomfortable seat on the rocks to watch the cove (the limestone dips 20° towards the sea here, which is not ideal). As the sea slowly retreated the first birds to venture out onto the fresh mud were black-headed gulls. A surprising proportion of these were juveniles, I suppose they're still enjoying the novelty of it. Eventually the black line of oystercatchers started to move away from the shore and become more diffuse, eventually forming three smaller flocks of birds then breaking up completely as they started flying out into the bay in strings of a dozen a so at a time. The curlews quietly dispersed, one minute there was a dark grey line across the mud, the next a rash of individuals spread across the tideline. The surprise of the day was a sudden panicky call from behind me as a juvenile green woodpecker was accidentally flushed from the roadside by some walkers. It flew out and over my head then suddenly veered back round whence it came. It's an odd thing: a very high percentage of the green woodpeckers I've seen, as opposed to just heard, have been at the seaside.

Jenny Brown's Point 

I lingered long enough to be convinced the Sabine's gull wasn't coming back and there were no surprises on the shoreline then I wandered back by way of Jack Scout, giving me the chance to scan the bay just in case, like. Lots more black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs but no albatrosses today.

The heathland on Jack Scout was busy with yet more gatekeepers and meadow browns, both of which were outnumbered by ringlets. Blackcaps sang from small trees while linnets and whitethroats bounced about in the bracken.

Jack Scout

I checked the time and the trains, noticed the string of cancellations and decided I needed to get a shift on for the station. The day's tally was expanded by a jay feeding by the roadside and a sparrowhawk being mobbed by house martins above the farmyard.

I got my train safely. It was cancelled at Preston, which isn't so bad because there's not generally too long a wait here for the next train going somewhere near Manchester. We'll draw a veil over the connection with my train home at Oxford Road which a dozen of us missed by two yards. A sour note ending what had been an excellent walk with some gentle birdwatching along the way.

Bempton

Red-tailed shrike

Now that me and my new boots are properly acquainted I thought it was time we had an adventure. I've been wargaming the train timetables to Bempton for a couple of weeks and the arrival of a red-tailed shrike to join the albatross there provided the impetus to give it a go. As it happens it's not much trickier than getting to Millom, though at three times the cost. The key to the trick is timing my arrival at Oxford Road such that I don't end up waiting the best part of an hour at Piccadilly or Sheffield, or both. I had four minutes in which to buy a ticket for the fast train to Sheffield, which gave me fifteen minutes for buying the ticket to Bempton (it's about twenty pounds cheaper to do it this way, train fare structures are insane).

I got off at Bempton Station and it started pouring down. It was like this, on and off, for the next half hour. It was an overcast, muggy sort of day and the showers weren't remotely refreshing which made the walking a bit unpleasant. I walked through the village and on towards the RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs.

Yellowhammer

Once past the village the hedgerows were busy with sparrows — mostly house sparrows near the village, nearly all tree sparrows further out — goldfinches, whitethroats and yellowhammers. 

I turned off to go down the lane to Wandale Farm where the shrike had been reported. The hedgerows were fizzing with gatekeeper butterflies, whitethroats, yellowhammers and reed buntings. A curlew flew overhead, calling all the while, and a corn bunting sang from the other side of the field.

Red-tailed shrike

As I got to the beginning of the lane to the farm I bumped into a chap who was scanning the far end of the field by the road. He reckoned he'd just seen the shrike on the hedge. We both scanned round. I noticed a lot of linnets perched on the telegraph wires and another, larger bird, perched off to the left of them, starling-sized but very top-heavy. I was pretty sure it was the shrike but it was silhouetted against bright clouds so it was hard to be sure and impossible of the identification. "There's a public footpath to the cliffs over there," he said, "If we follow that we should get a closer look." We walked down, the shrike clocked us, it didn't give a monkey's and we got very close views — about thirty yards — from our side of the hedge. I've never seen a shrike that close before, they've always been on the other side of a field (hark at the expert! This is my fourth). We watched as it preened and caught flies from the wire, often just snapping them up as they went past. I took loads of photos, bracketing the exposure like mad to try and make sure they weren't all silhouettes and I'm still not happy with any of them. I forgot to ask the chap's name, but thank you sir whoever you are.

Red-tailed shrike

Red-tailed shrike

Red-tailed shrike

As to the shrike, well the first impression I got was that it was very like the red-bscked shrike I saw last year. The black mask and big black bill were conspicuous. At first sight it looked like it had a grey crown but this was a trick of the light, the upperparts were cool, sandy brown, contrasting with the milky coffee colour of the underparts, the throat paler than the breast. I understand that's the most obvious difference between red-tailed and isabelline shrikes. The tail was dark mahogany red getting brighter and redder towards the tail coverts while the rump was paler and sandier than the back. The contrast in colour between the tail and the upperparts was very striking, and very different to the brown shrike I saw a few years ago.

(I think that officially we should be calling red-tailed shrikes "Turkestan shrikes" and isabelline shrikes "Daurian shrikes" to prevent any confusion now both firms have been split from the old "isabelline shrike" species.)

I wandered down the path to the cliff, assailed by ringlets and meadow browns in the tall grass as I walked through it. Reed buntings, skylarks, meadow pipits and corn buntings bobbed up and down or flew between fields. At one point there were three birds singing from adjacent fence posts, a mipit, a skylark and a corn bunting and they scattered as a crow passed low overhead before I could get a picture. The breeze coming in off the sea made walking a whole lot more comfortable.

Bempton Cliffs 

I haven't been to a busy seabird colony since before lockdown and I hadn't realised how much I'd missed them. The gannets, fulmars and kittiwakes were making most of the noise but there were plenty enough guillemots, razorbills and puffins to be seen and if you looked hard enough there were a few shags fishing round the bottom of the cliffs below.

Gannets

Razorbils

Kittiwakes

Puffin

Guillemots

The white dots are gannets

Gannets

Gannets

Some of the gannets are rebuilding their nests

Gannet

Puffin

Gannets

I had a dawdle round, looking to see what was about and remembering that the last time I was this close to gannets and puffins I had 36 photos to a roll of film. All the while I was scanning round for anything that might look like an albatross, letting myself get distracted whenever a two-year old gannet flew under the cliffs. I said: "Oh dear," when somebody told me I'd just missed it. As I'd walking over one of the headlands over a cliff the people at the viewpoint I'd just left were treated to its flying in and back out again. It repeated the trick as I was walking back again but didn't come back a third time.

Razorbill

Guillemots

Ah well, I'd had the shrike. I sat down for five minutes' seawatching to rest my legs and spotted a big object on the water just over a mile out. The visibility was good enough to see it but not identify it so I dismissed it as one of the buoys marking the channel used by cliff watching boats. Then the object took to the air. From that distance I assumed it was a lesser black-back then I realised it was looking as big as the gannets flying about half a mile further in. And there was something about the wings, they carried on where a gull's wing should finish. It flew by something that was either a kittiwake or a herring gull and that clinched the size factor. A very unsatisfying life tick but they all count in the end. Now I know Bempton's not as inaccessible as I feared I can save up for another go.

Record shot: black-browed albatross

Very heavily-cropped edit of the above photo

I got myself a cup of tea then walked straight back into Bempton for the train back to Sheffield. There were more tree sparrows, yellowhammers and whitethroats in the hedges and a lesser whitethroat called from the middle of a nettle patch in a hedge bottom. The only chiffchaff of the day was singing in the village as I passed through.

Yellowhammer

An excellent day's birdwatching, a couple of life ticks (my British list is now 289, the year list 191), the renewal of close acquaintance with seabirds and a nice five mile toddle to get a bit of exercise.

Female sparrowhawk, Sheffield Station on the way home.

Wellacre Country Park

Jay, Wellacre Wood

It was too warm, and I was too tired, to do overly much so I had a teatime wander round Wellacre Country Park just to keep my hand in.

Wellacre Wood was mostly quiet, a couple of blackcaps, a chiffchaff and some goldfinches being the most conspicuous birds in the trees. Coming out into the open fields the most conspicuous birds were the magpies and jays feeding in the grass, in contrast I had to look hard to find the woodpigeons and blackbirds. A ring-necked parakeet shouted the odds from the trees over by the pond.

Jay, Wellacre Wood

There were lots of warblers about on Jack Lane but it took a while to start seeing any of them. A couple of chiffchaffs and a blackcap sang from the willows and there were at least three singing reed warblers, plus a family quietly rummaging round in a patch of reedmace. A water rail broke the euphony and was soon joined by the squealing calls of young moorhens begging for food.

There seemed to have been a mass eruption of gatekeeper butterflies, they were everywhere. Half a dozen brown hawkers quartered Jack Lane accompanied by a couple of migrant hawkers. Oddly enough there were no dragonflies about on Dutton's Pond, possibly because every post had an angler fishing from it.

Gatekeeper, Jack Lane

It was too warm for a hike up Fly Ash Hill so I walked halfway up and skirted round the top of the mound, disturbing lots more gatekeepers along the way. A couple of whitethroats churred from hawthorn bushes and a chiffchaff stationed itself in a sycamore on one of the rises, the better to be heard.

Latticed heath, Fly Ash Hill 

River Mersey, Flixton Bridge 

I had a quick scan of the river from Flixton Bridge and found only a blackbird and a couple of woodpigeons this time. But it's always worth a look.

Home thoughts

It occurs to me that next Spring I should do some sort of data collection and analysis so that I can next Summer I could say: "The sunflower seeds in the feeder have gone down two inches so x spadgers gave probably visited." It would be easier in Winter when there's very little cover and I can see most everything in the undergrowth but the limited alternative food sources would mean I was measuring apples against pears. Spring would be better with enough lack of cover to see what's about and enough emerging insects, etc. to approach the situation in Summer. I can think of a dozen ways why this would all be statistically iffy —  mind you so is recording four sparrows a day in the garden when I'm refilling the feeder every two days. Anyway, it would be interesting to see if a correlation can be discovered or whether there are too many other factors getting in the way.

Mosses

Yellowhammer, Chat Moss

It's a sunny Saturday so a walk across the mosses was the order of the day. I set off mid-afternoon to miss the midday quiet period. It was still very warm but a very welcome cooling breeze came across the fields as I walked down Astley Road.

A feature of the whole afternoon was the movement of squadrons of woodpigeons overhead, mostly towards ripening fields of barley. The Irlam end of Astley Road was pretty quiet: a few goldfinches and a couple of whitethroats sang, a few blackbirds and dunnocks rummaged in the roadside vegetation, but even the great tits went about their business in silence.

Astley Road 

The usual kestrels weren't around by the Jack Russell's gate (the Jack Russell was asleep in the yard). I caught up with one of the youngsters sitting on the wires by Prospect Grange. As, indeed, did a crow which took advantage of its being on its own and gave it a hard chase across the field. Probably the same two birds involved in the drama last time I walked down here.

It was a little busier the other side of the motorway though still considerably quieter than usual. Across the whole acreage of turf fields there were two woodpigeons, a pied wagtail and half a dozen low-flying swallows. Things picked up a lot around the stables and horse paddocks with goldfinches and house sparrows twittering in the hedgerows with a few greenfinches and yellowhammers.

Skylark, Chat Moss

There were a lot of butterflies about, mostly large whites and small tortoiseshells with a few red admirals. I turned the corner at Four Lanes End. There were five painted lady territories along this stretch of path and when they weren't busy chasing each other out of their territories they were chasing off any other winged creatures. They're even more aggressive than the small tortoiseshells, which is saying some.

I had to stop for a couple of minutes to let a skylark finish gathering up a beakful of beetles. Very unusually I didn't hear a single one of them today.

Cinnabar moth caterpillar on ragwort, Little Woolden Moss 

The trees at the entrance to Little Woolden Moss were busy with willow warblers and wrens collecting food for hungry mouths. Small family parties of goldfinches fed in the treetops while linnets fed on the open ground and in the heather.

Yellow wagtail, Little Woolden Moss

A couple of dozen lapwings loafed on the pools while linnets, meadow pipits and pied wagtails fed round the edges. A yellow wagtail flew in, I thought at first it was the Channel wagtail that's been about but it was just the harsh light bouncing off a perfectly normal female yellow wagtail's head. The light was so harsh that from some angles even the backs of the male pied wagtails took on a silvery sheen. A lot of the youngsters are still very pale and a couple of times I looked twice in the hopes of a white wagtail (it still rankles that I missed their Spring passage).

There were still a few dragonflies about: a couple each of common blue damselflies and migrant hawkers and my first common darter of the year.

I didn't even bother checking the bus times in Glazebury and headed back to walk down Twelve Yards Road, passing a resting brown hare along the way.

Hare, Little Woolden Moss

The fields and hedges along Twelve Yards Road were busy with birds being mostly very quiet. A blackcap and a chiffchaff sang from the trees by the stables, a whitethroat sang from the willowherbs in a drain (there were more whitethroats going about their business in dead silence the length of the road). A few black-headed gulls flew over to the poos to the North. More woodpigeons flew to and fro between fields.

Juvenile kestrels, Chat Moss

Over by one of the farmyards I noticed that the kestrel nest box is still occupied, the youngsters sitting at the entrance waiting for the parents to deliver meals. The male ranged across the moss to do his hunting while the female kept to the fields immediately by the farmyard.

The yellow bird singing on the wires near Cutnook Lane this week was a yellowhammer. And very nice, too.

By Twelve Yards Road 

I had a quick five minutes up the path towards the pools North of Twelve Yards Road, adding coots and song thrushes to the day's tally. I didn't linger, I wanted to make sure not to miss the bus home this time.

I'd been conscious that I hadn't seen a buzzard all day so it came as a bit of a relief when one drifted over Cutnook Lane. Blackcaps, chiffchaffs and song thrushes sang me down the lane and a couple of chattering mistle thrushes escorted me onto the bridge over the motorway.

And this time I had two minutes' grace before the 100 bus arrived to take me back to the Trafford Centre.